AN INEXPENSIVE BACKGROUND.-An inpensive and easily made background for the home photographer is made from one leaf of an old-fashioned clothes horse, or a similar frame made of two inch material.

Wrapping paper is smoothly tacked onto both sides, over which wallpaper is pasted. For one side choose plain felt paper in a medium shade; for the other side get a pretty flowery design trailing over a lattice. A portrait taken in front of this will appear as in a setting of a real bower of roses.

To the top of frame attach an easel back which can be adjusted for either side, completing two pretty backgrounds on a light, movable frame, which can be used either in or out-of-doors.

GRACE C. RUTTER.

TONING WITH HYPO. The cost, the trouble, and the time to be expended in toning silver chloride prints is occasionally said to be the reason why non-toning papers of the velox type are relatively so successful. Now velox is excellent in that it can be made to yield bright prints from the average soft, thin, negatives giving gray insipid images on silver chloride paper but it has not all the advantages on its side. With intensified negatives, silver chloride paper or postcards will give toned and fixed prints with less trouble than is incurred in the making up of developing solutions and in the working in obscure daylight or lamplight as must be done for velox. Just take the silver prints out of the frame and throw them straight into a dish of hypo that has been acidified with citric acid. You thus obtain any tone from a warm or cold red to coffee-brown, to sepia and purple

pretty pictures suited for any subject and which many persons-particularly women folk-prefer infinitely to the monotonous coldness of the black papers. As to permanency of results, the hypo-toned prints probably serve the average purpose of looking well until interest in them vanishes, when they follow the road of all waste paper and the majority of photographs. For prints that are sent to journals for reproduction—mechanical subjects-I should consider it waste of money to send anything better than prints so treated, provided the negative was plucky. And scant need be the washing of prints for such purposes. Pictures to treasure are best made on carbon, and glazed on a collodionized plate they will keep bright and fresh for forty years. It is to be observed that a silver gelatine print of red tone will not turn yellow and fade nearly so quickly as one toned purple.

CHARLES R. KING.

Working in a store where there were a dozen or more roll films to be developed daily and growing tired of the waste of time and the gymnastic drills necessary to bring them through the developer, I decided to try to apply the film pack method to whole rolls. I first had a carpenter make me a tray long enough to hold a six exposure postcard size film, the longest met with in average work, and five inches wide. I covered this with plain white oilcloth gluing it to the bottom and sides of the tray.

For developing I found a quart of solution was sufficient and by carefully washing each roll on both sides before placing it in the developer and using care to see that

the developer got over it evenly at the start, I found that I could handle as many as seven rolls of film, all face down, and one on top of another, in the same solution. Usually this number is not needed for the first one will be ready for the hypo, before you have reached the fourth or fifth. By using this method I have turned out as high as a dozen rolls in a half hour and with less labor and muscular strain than was needed to develop one roll under the old method.

It would seem at first that this method would cause developer stains but with care in handling makes universally better negatives than by any other method I know. The advantages of the method are: The saving of time, the saving of energy, the lessening of the tendency to under-development through desire to get to the next film, lessening the tendency to frill in the summer time because the solution is exhausted and thrown out in a few minutes and the films are finished with a minimum handling.

I would say in this connection that such a process as this shows conclusively the difference between the true non-curling films and the so-called ones. The Ansco films after being thoroughly wet will lie flat in the tray whether face down or face up while certain other films curl up into a roll at once and require straightening out several times during development.

The method I suggest here is of course only of value in galleries and stores doing a great deal of amateur work and having roll films by the dozens to develop.

W. L. BARN HART.

Here is a method of toning blue prints that I have never read or heard of and which I think gives better pictures than the ordinary blue print. Print somewhat darker than wanted if for ordinary blue print and immerse in a solution of ammonia, about 1/10, the strength of ordinary "Household ammonia." It may also be useful to note that a Delft color can be obtained by putting three or four drops of "Household ammonia" to about 10 ounces of water.

RALPH NEWMAN.

A CAMERA ΤΟ TRAP SPEEDERS.

An automatic camera to measure the speed of automobiles by registering two snapshots at an accurately timed interval is now being used in Massachusetts. Its inventors, Daniel F. Comstock and Herbert T. Kalmus, of the Institute of Technology, recently testified in the first case in which such a camera-record was presented as evidence. This case, says Motor Age promises to be celebrated in motor history. The speeder was found guilty in the lower court, but has taken an appeal, which will shortly come up before the Superior Court at Boston. Says the paper just named:

"The instrument bids fair to revolutionize methods of trapping speeders, for the motorist will know nothing about it until he is haled into court, as the camera will register the speed and get the number at the same time, according to its in

"The method used by the operator of the camera is to step out behind the motorcar as it passes, hold the lens vertical and press the button. This registers the first picture, and about a second later the shutter works automatically and registers another picture on the same plate. Naturally, when the machine is moving, the picture first taken is considerably larger than that taken in the second instance.

"Inside the camera, and just where it will show between the upper and lower pictures, is a small dial, around which a hand works, anticlock like. When the operator snaps the button for the first picture the hand starts and continues around the dial until the second exposure is made, when it instantly stops. There are little notches on the dial which have been worked out by mathematics for timing purposes.

"As soon as the picture has been de

veloped the process of calculation begins. A small steel scale, with the fractions of an inch carefully marked off, is used to measure the distance between the treads of the two rear wheels as shown in the first photograph and then the measurement of the same section of the machine are taken in the second picture. By a system of mathematical formulas, the measurements of the rear of the machine are worked out and then a comparison is made with the notches on the same dial in the camera over which the hand has passed. This method, the inventors testified, has been used before for scientific purposes, but only within the past week or so for the purpose of timing motor-cars.

"Frank M. Harrington, the policeman in the case, in his testimony described several tests he had made. On one occasion they tallied exactly with the figures taken by a timer with a watch and on several others had come only a small fraction below the time given by the watch."

-Literary Digest.

WHY SHE COULDN'T SPEAK.

A photographer in an Iowa town was called upon not long ago to make some pictures of an old lady of seventy years or so, but of surprising agility and quickness of perception.

The picture-man was, therefore, somewhat surprised to find that no words of address could induce the old lady to speak until the operation was completed. Then she put her fingers into her mouth, whence she withdrew several wads of paper.

"You wouldn't have me photographed with my cheeks falling in, would you?" she asked the photographer. “I just stuffed two pages of a newspaper in my mouth to fill out."

CLEVELAND, OHIO, CAMERA CLUB. Cleveland, Ohio, has accomplished one of its long felt wants, an enthusiastic camera club. On the eve of November 2, a handful of camera enthusiasts organized "The Cleveland Camera Club," under the auspices of the "Cleveland Central Young Men's Christian Association," the purpose of the club being to increase the efficiency of work among both beginners and advanced amateur photographers.

The first regular meeting which was held November 16, 1909, closed its books that date with forty-one charter members.

The first business of the evening, was election of officers, the results of which were as follows: E. A. Ruggle, president; E. Berdge, vice-president, G. P.

G.

Rodgers, secretary and treasurer; E. A. Ruggle, G. E. Berdge, J. C. Ulmer, L. C. De Groodt, executive committee; E. G. Kirmode, V. P. Terrell, membership committee.

L. C. DE GROODT.
*

THE POSTAL PHOTOGRAPHIC CLUB,
WASHINGTON, D. C.

The year 1909 was one of great prosperity for the club, and the year 1910 bids fair to be equally prosperous.

As previously announced in the Bulletin for December, 1909, the officers of the club were re-elected to serve during the year 1910. The officers have been re-elected annually for the past ten years. The club is in a highly prosperous condition. In addition to its authorized strength (40) there is a waiting list of three. Its finances are in a healthy condition, the character of the work exhibited in the club Albums is of a high grade, and the utmost harmony, zeal, and enthusiasm prevail among the members. G. A. BRANDT, Secretary.

TOLEDO CAMERA CLUB, TOLEDO, O. The activities of the Toledo Camera Club have been most marked during the past summer and fall. The past interest has not only been retained, but has been greatly enhanced through the good fellowship engendered by coming in contact with each other while afield. The study of composition has been of excellent help to all and our way of studying has had a beneficial effect on every member.

The club has had at least one outing each month, some months two and one month three, and the attendance has been from 12 to 25 present at each outing. It