“No go!” he greeted his chums. “The hangar light fogged the film. It was light-struck, all right.”
“How about another test, from the inner end of the roll?” Garry suggested.
“We can try that,” agreed Chick.
Into the intense blackness of the room they crowded, and, by sense of touch Don extracted from the inner spool of the roll, an inch or so of film, while Garry washed out the developing tank used for the films they took of new craft for making half-tone engravings, pictures for circulars, catalogues and “trade paper” illustrations.
Chick, mixing a fresh charge of pyro, with sodium sulphite and the right amount of carbonate, from ready-prepared packets, enclosed the film in a roll of rubber-edged material that let the developer seep in but keep the fabric from touching the delicate film surface.
“Get the tank lid tight,” he warned Garry after the solution had been mixed and poured in, the film container being swished up and down to get the film full impregnated. “I have to light the bulb to time it and get the temperature of the mixture by the thermometer you just had in the tank.”
“Go ahead—it’s tight.”
They allowed twenty minutes for development; then the light was extinguished and the door, opened for ventilation, was closed.
In darkness Chick removed the film, handling its container gingerly as he immersed it in the hypo fixing bath to “set” the image. They gave it about half a minute of darkness in the fixing bath.
“Now we can see it,” he decided. “Switch on the——”