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BECAUSE TIME IS SO TRUTHFUL STOP SO NEWS AWAKE STOP WILL TIME BE SO KIND AS TO ANSWER. . . . WHO MADE THE PLATES ON THE NATURAL COLOR PHOTOGRAPH OF OUR NEXT PRESIDENT IX YOUR JANUARY SECOND COVER STOP BY WHAT MEANS WAS THIS NATURAL COLOR PHOTOGRAPH MADE STOP WHY HASN'T TIME ANNOUNCED SUCH A NOTEWORTHY CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE AS A NATURAL COLOR PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESS THAT JUSTIFIES A POSITION ON TIMES COYER.
A. H. MACDONALD
Detroit, Mich.
The Roosevelt cover picture was produced by the Finlay color process, in commercial use since 1929, named for Clare Finlay, a London color photography pioneer. O. J. Jordan of Washington, D. C. who made the TIME photograph, explains that the Finlay process renders color photography almost as simple as ordinary black & white photography. The Roosevelt picture was taken with Photo flash bulbs for lighting, with an exposure of about 1/50 sec. The colors were recorded on one special sensitized plate, placed behind a taking screen made up of hundreds of thousands of infinitesimal tri-color (red, green, blue-violet) filters which absorb part of the light and transmit the remainder to the plate. This process produces a transparency which, held to the light, shows a photograph in original color.
Besides the Finlay process, only two others produce a color photograph in one exposure on a single plate. Other processes use three successive plates behind three successive color filters.—ED.
Gutmann's Heath Sirs:
I like to take you by the forelock. I was naturally pleased that one of my portraits, which Mr. Jewell, the art critic, had reproduced in the New York Times, had aroused your interest.
I came down with a thump when I saw TIME. My picture reproduced well (TIME, Dec. 12). The subject and even his rubber roller were mentioned, so was the photographer of my painting. The artist himself was thrust out of TIME and space.
BERNHARD GUTMANN
Norwalk, Conn.
To Painter Gutmann, apologies for not identifying him with his portrait of Woodcutter Howard Heath in action.—ED.
Akron's Spider
Sirs:
I am enclosing two clippings giving correct version of the sensationalized spider story you got out of the daily press. One clipping is 'my letter from the Sunday Times Press (Scripps-Howard newspaper), in which the long drawn out spider story was worked up. It might be said that the spider was observed and publicized in and by the newspaper, certainly we in this department did not do a thing!
Never in my experience has so much been made of so simple an incident. It somehow caught the newspapermen's fancy. Clippings have come from all over, indicating country-wide use, and worse and worse falsification of the story. It has been irritating. You understand it is not my desire to flee from the wrath of the various sentimentalists whose crank letters have come to me complaining of "cruelty," etc. But it is because the whole thing as far as our institution is concerned, is untrue. . . .
When your article in Dec. 19 issue came to my attention, I was prompted to exclaim, "Et lit?" . . . We had no observation, study or experiment going. The news reports were in error, and sensationalized and misleading. .
WALTER C. KRAATZ
Biology Department University of Akron Akron, Ohio
Banker Cooke
Sirs: