Celluloid Roll Film

George Eastman's Kodak introduced the first transparent celluloid roll film in 1889, replacing the paper-backed roll film Eastman had sold since 1885 and the fragile glass plates that preceded it. Its flexible strip, wound through a simple camera back, was adopted almost immediately by the pioneers of motion pictures, Edison's laboratory among them, as the base for the perforated 35mm film stock that became the standard gauge of cinema. Episcopal minister Hannibal Goodwin had already filed his own celluloid roll-film patent on 2 May 1887, two years before Eastman's product reached the market, but the patent was not granted until 1898; Goodwin's assignee, Ansco, later sued Eastman Kodak for infringement and won five million dollars in 1914, a legal victory that never displaced Eastman's name as the one most associated with the format.