Paper Print

Paper Print

Paper prints were an early mechanism to establish the copyright of motion pictures by depositing them with the Library of Congress. Thomas Alva Edison’s company was first to register each frame of movie film onto a positive paper print, in 1893. The Library of Congress processed and cataloged each of the films as one photograph, accepting thousands of photocopies of films over a twenty-year period.

The unintended but fortunate other outcome is that while the actual films and negatives of this period decayed or were destroyed, the paper prints sat ignored and more-or-less preserved. When this deposit policy ended in 1912 and actual film prints were registered and immediately returned to the copyright holder, many films in the following three decades were lost forever because their original elements (for example, Nitrate film) were too unstable for any lasting preservation or conservation. Paper prints, though, came with their own unpredictable nature, bringing migration challenges that rival the difficulties involved with the analog/digital conversions of today.