Checks Go Hollywood
New Device To Outwit Forgers Photographs Drafts At The Farmers National Bank
Forney Herald
Friday, 14 April 1939, Page 26
Protection against crooks, poor memory and carelessness, and to provide a permanent record of all checks handled by the bank which are drawn on an out of town bank are a few of the duties of a new machine to be installed Tuesday by the Farmers National bank of Forney.
The machine photographs documents on a tiny moving picture film, so tiny that seven checks can be snapped on an inch of the roll which is only five-eighths of an inch in width. The complete roll measures 100 feet in length and records pictures of more than 7,000 checks. Further convenience of the photographic records is shown by the fact that only a small amount of storage space is required for the vast number of copies made daily.
Actual installation of the photographic device will be made by George Dietrich, of Dallas.
HOW MACHINE WORKS
Here is how the machine works: The check to be photographed is dropped by the operator into a slot of a cabinet that contains the camera and motors. Checks may be fed in at the rate of 80 to 100 a minute, the machine photographing several at a time on a roll of film.
When it is necessary to examine the record all that bank officials need to do is to get the right film, slip the spool, which is no longer than the palm of a man’s hand, in a machine that looks like one of the “nickel in the slot” movie projectors in “penny arcades,” and unwind the roll until the picture of a check is thrown upon a ground-glass screen. A full size copy of the film check, which is legal in court, is made if a print is needed.
The idea for the invention of the check photographing device is that of a New Yorker who conceived it while watching a motion picture showing Babe Ruth, baseball’s former home run king, in slow motion scene, as he batted a ball out into the park.
Many banks use the machines to keep film reproduction of all the checks handled daily and the Farmers National bank officials have plans for the future adoption of this system. At present, however, only checks and documents drawn on out of town financial institutions will be kept in photographic files.
