A home for pioneers in the cinema
Kinemacolor and other innovations
Wardour Street has a long association with the cinema industry and was the home for early innovations in colour films. The entrepreneur, Charles Urban promoted Kinemacolor from 82 Wardour Street. Number 84 next door was the home of Pathe News.
Kinemacolor 
The first colour movies were produced towards the end of the nineteenth century by hundreds of young women painting the frames of black and white film.
The first successful process for shooting and projecting colour film was the Kinemacolor process. In the Kinemacolor process film ran through both the camera and projector at 32 frames a second, double the normal rate. A spinning wheel with two coloured filters meant that alternate frames shot and projected the red to yellow and the green to blue parts of the spectrum. The first Kinemacolor film was shown in public on the 26th February 1909.
The release of the first film produced by an early version of the superior Technicolor process in 1917 killed off Kinemacolor which had been a considerable success in Britain but was much less popular in the USA.
Pathe news
Staff of Pathe news recall an early example of chemical recycling which they carried out on the roof of 84 Wardour Street. They dissolved scrap celluloid film in sodium hydroxide solution (caustic soda) to make a solution which could be sold to make simple plastic objects such as cheap combs.
Submitted by: Roger Smither, Imperial War Museum, 16 January 2007
