Over the past twenty-five
years, the Chicago Albumen Works has developed
and refined the techniques for recovering the
image layer from deteriorated acetate films.
As a replacement for
flammable nitrocellulose films, cellulose
acetate films did prevent the disastrous fires
caused by spontaneous combustion, but the
acetate films themselves were not without their
own inherent vice: as they aged, the film base
shrank until the image layer could no longer
conform. Eventually, the image layer
de-laminated in furrows or channels, rendering
the negative unusable for printing and the image
unavailable for archiving.
The procedure used by CAW
incorporates the following steps:
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