Occupation Film Archivist Years active 1935 to 2008 | Name Harold Brown Role Film preservationist | |
Born August 15, 1919 ( 1919-08-15 ) Walthamstow, UK Died November 14, 2008, Berkhamsted, United Kingdom | ||
Harold Brown was the first head of film preservation at the British Film Institute's archive. He was hired by the archive's founding curator, Ernest Lindgren, upon its creation in 1935, and remained in the post until his retirement in 1984.
Biography
In his role at the BFI, Brown made a major contribution to the science of film preservation. He was possibly the first archivist to research systematically the process of nitrate film decomposition, and consequently to show that it can be inhibited by storage in a cool and dry atmosphere. Brown is credited with having invented the term vinegar syndrome to describe the deacetylation of cellulose acetate film base. He designed and built specialist printers to enable the preservation copying of shrunken and otherwise damaged originals. He was an active member of FIAF's Technical Commission, in which capacity he wrote and contributed to a number of technical manuals that are still regarded as standard reference works by film archivists today. In retirement, Brown was a prominent volunteer with the Projected Picture Trust, restoring and operating historical projectors at a museum in Bletchley Park.