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Nitrate film being stored in a 20th Century Fox facility spontaneously combusted, destroying more than 40,000 reels of negatives and film prints.

Historical image related to Nitrate film being stored in a 20th Century Fox facility spontaneously combusted, destroying more than 40,000 reels of negatives and film prints. from July 9, 1937

Nitrocellulose

Highly flammable compound

Nitrocellulose is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid. One of its first major uses was as guncotton, a replacement for gunpowder as propellant in firearms. It was also used to replace gunpowder…
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20th Century Studios

American film production and distribution company

20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly 20th Century Fox, is an American film production and distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the Disney Entertainment business segment of the Walt Disney Company. It is headquartered at the Fox…
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1937 Fox vault fire

Fire at film storage facility in New Jersey

A major fire occurred in a 20th Century-Fox film-storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, United States on July 9, 1937. Flammable nitrate film had previously contributed to several fires in film-industry laboratories, studios and vaults, although the precise causes were…
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

Negative (photography)

Image on photographic film

In photography, a negative is an image, usually on a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film, in which the lightest areas of the photographed subject appear darkest and the darkest areas appear lightest. This reversed order occurs because the extremely light-sensitive…
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Release print

Copy of a film that is provided to a movie theater

A release print is a copy of a film that is provided to a movie theater for exhibition.
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