John Carbutt

John Carbutt (1832-1905) was the first person to use celluloid for photographic film.

He was born in Sheffield, England on 2 December 1832. He moved to Chicago in 1853.

Carbutt founded the Keystone Dry Plate Works in 1879 and was the first to develop sheets of celluloid coated with photographic emulsion for making celluloid film in 1888. Around 1890 he made them in a 35 mm width for William Kennedy Dickson's Kinetoscope, which set the 35 mm film standard for motion picture cameras and still cameras. That format lasted over a century, until digital camera use took over.