 He realized when you get an old timer here, you want to get someone who's old who experienced the past. But you don't want to get him so old that he forgot the past. You're right. And I only hope you hit it right. I'm sure we did, actually. So to start with the beginning, you were quite a nice little boy here, born in Canada. That was taken 90 years ago. Really? And your name, actually, this is not Peter. This is grandfather, right? Because grandfather gives your name, right? So very quickly, you were a good student. So you went to McGill in 46. You graduate, and you were interested in, I give you all this little bio here, in chemical engineering, basically. And then go into physical chemistry, right? And go for a doctorate. But in between, you marry Rose, which, as I recall, your dad was not totally convinced you should do that at that time, right? Well, he couldn't understand how I could get married when I didn't have a job. I was still in graduate school. So that was his big concern. He was concerned about, can you sustain a family, and so forth, too, right? So anyway, you graduate in 49, and look for a job, and the other important step, actually, you had this interview at Kodak, which was there with John Caloon, right? And John Caloon, you become your friend, you become your mentor. Can you talk a little bit about him? Well, I got my graduate degree in 1949. Yeah, closer. Closer, can you hear me now? And at that time, there was a slight recession in this country. I wanted to move to the States because chemistry in Canada was primarily quality control. And that's not what I wanted to do. So that's why I applied to the companies in the States. And I sent out about 80 applications. I got three responses, which isn't a very high percentage. Is it with the Guru or what? And anyways, I was interviewed at Eastern Kodak, and I had an advantage. Because the man that wanted someone to work in his lab was Dr. Jalan Caloon. And the advantage I had with Dr. Caloon was he was also Canadian and also got his doctorate in McClelland University. So I didn't have to be very smart to have him like me. And I went to work at his lab. And I maintained a relationship with that man all my career. He was an outstanding individual, very conservative, very thorough, very honorable. And he didn't always appreciate my humor. So you were hired. And in 55, actually, you become the head of the physical profiteur laboratory. And that's become you stay there all your career. Can you tell us a little bit about the missions of that lab? Well, when Caloon was promoted, I just hopped along behind him. And I took over responsibility for his lab. And that was about half a dozen people. But then the responsibilities of the lab increased. One of the reasons was that Kodak wanted to cut down the number of management. And so other labs were eventually rolled into mind. And when I retired, I think I had something like 45 people. And that wasn't always a blessing, because you get away from the technical work and spend a lot of time with personnel. And usually, on the 45, two or three of the people were the ones that gave me the problems. So you follow all this transition from nitrates to acetate, to polyester that Fernanda and other speaker talked about. And your role was to test most of the physical property, to try to develop some, what is the best base for this product and so forth, right? Yeah. Well, we were very much involved in the change in the plastics that were used. And Fernando gave a very good description of what happened over the years. When I started at Kodak, there was still manufacturing cellulose nitrate. You can wonder why would Kodak produce a film on such a highly flammable material. And that was a real problem for Kodak. And they worked very, very hard to try to get rid of cellulose nitrate. And reference was made earlier this morning to the disastrous fire in the Cleveland Clinic in 1929. And that was when their x-ray storage went up in flames. In fact, my brother-in-law studied at the Cleveland Clinic about 25 years later. And the man that he worked under, a physician, was still suffering very badly from smoke inhalation from that disastrous fire. And there was another disastrous fire, the National Archives. You would think the National Archives wouldn't have fires, but they did. And this was their aerial film, which went up in flames. And then at the George Eastman House, their collection went up in flames. Fortunately, the film storage area was not attached to the main mansion, which is very important to some people. Yeah. Yeah, but by the way, I changed the name now. It's not the George Eastman House. It's the George Eastman Museum. So you, as Fernanda, I think, said, you wrote something like 80 papers in your career. And you told me that a few are good, right? So we will try to pinpoint those. And the first work that I would like to underscore here, it's the Britain Earth test, because I think it's very revealing of you looking for the right testing, but also the simplest, the most elegant solution to a problem that can be complicated, right? Well, this is when I started work for Calhoun. And one of the first assignments I had was to investigate why some photographic films are brutal. And this certainly became a high priority when the manager of film manufacture was skiing in the cold, and his film broke. That immediately gave that property a very high priority. And the first thing when you want to investigate a property is you have to learn how to measure it. And the way they were measuring brittleness at that time at Kodak was really very poor. And so this wedge brittleness test was one that I worked on myself. And it proved to be very good. It's very, very simple, which is one of the advantages of a nice test. And in fact, the Kodak had a pretty broad view of activities. And they suggested that this be published in a paper and released to everybody, including their competitors. And this test was used at IPI about a year or two ago. So it's still a widely accepted test. So basically, you prove the film. And when you prove the film, the diameter is going smaller and smaller, and the film will break, right? And the second device that I would like to talk a little bit in the background is the so-called fork and cork test. This was not invented by me, although I'll be glad to take credit for it. This was quite a few years later. And we were passed by the marketing division of motion picture film. Some of our film, Kodak film, breaks in Kodak projectors. And of course, everybody blames Kodak. And the reason for that is because the photographic film, in fact, photographic processors didn't lubricate the film. It cost the penny or more just to lubricate the film. I mean, just an extra tank. And if the film is lubricated, it performs well. If it isn't lubricated, it breaks. And so the marketing organization wants to have a simple test that they can take to their users to show whether a film is lubricated or not lubricated. This assignment was given to a man who worked in my group named Jack Carroll, who was a very, very bright and innovative guy. And he put an end of a paperclip into a cork, balanced the cork with two forks, and then slid this contraption down a plane. And if the film was lubricated, the plane had to be at a very low angle, and it would slide. And if it wasn't lubricated, you would have a very high angle in the film, and this device wouldn't move at all. And so the test was called the cork and fork test. But eventually, a better model was made. Which is on this crane. And it made very, very inexpensively and was given out to a lot of the consumers, Kodak film. And so we were heroes as far as the marketing division was concerned. We didn't always remain heroes. Yeah, we will come to that. Actually, we even use this test, as you remember, to test magnetic tapes, right? That is correct. The more sticky, the anger needs to be greater. So the other paper was quite good. You are not the only one to think that. It's a paper you published in 1970. And so I would like, well, I can only will am actually in 2012. I saw that quarter here. He talked about a small graph on page four clearly showing what was possible to stabilize and to preserve dyes, color dye. Could you talk about that? This was around 1969 or so. This was in Calhoun, was technical assistant for the general manager of Kodak Park, which was a big job. And I had responsibility for his own lab. And the motion picture archivist from the National Archives came to Kodak and said, we would like a paper on just how stable our Kodak dyes, because there's a lot of information going around that was conflicting. And some people rated the stability of color by how it exposed at very high intense illumination. And very few people store their film on your high intensity illumination. And so the gentleman from the archives wanted a Kodak paper. So Calhoun called in Lloyd West, Dr. Lloyd West, Dr. Lauren Graham, and myself to prepare a paper. This was not anything that we had an option of doing. And I didn't know either of these gentlemen before. Their labs were about a mile from where my lab was. Kodak Park was a tremendously big place with hundreds of buildings. So it's not surprising that I didn't know them. And I never became, but I would call a close friend of either of these gentlemen. They were older than I, quite conservative. But we managed to get along rather well. And we wrote a particular paper. And Graham was an expert in motion picture film and knew all about making separation negatives and separation positives and how you got a final color print. Lloyd West had a color lab where he tested various dyes at different temperatures. And my responsibility was on the physical behavior of motion picture film. And the critical graph, which is right there on the screen, was showing how dye stability is very dependent upon the temperature. And that is the. Right. So the management was not happy, I understand, about the result, because of 70 Fahrenheit. After 10 years, the dye were faded, right? Well, yeah, this was. Well, we, backing up a little, the three of us debated a long time what we do with this information. And do we want to recommend to the consumer to store their film in a freezer? And this has been very, very conducive. If you want to go and look at your film to run down to the freezer to look at your film. But for big institutions, maybe it's a possibility. So we, in this paper, we gave several ways of doing it. We didn't recommend any. After the paper, and you mentioned that after the paper was written and the marketing organization looked at it, and they wanted to stop it. They didn't like the paper at all. Because what it indicated was that Kodak film fades, which most consumers knew. The marketing organization didn't want to admit to it. And Calhoun indicated the facts are facts, and they should be released. And the paper was released. Once the paper was published, Allen Goodridge, who was the chief archivist at the John F. Kennedy Library, which was just being built south of Boston at the time. And he said that's a good approach. And he instituted cold storage in the Kennedy Library, which was great. And once he set the pattern, then other institutions did the same thing, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Geographic. And of course, the Hollywood studios went to cold storage because keeping their motion picture film is equinomatically advantageous, because they released these films over game. Fantasia, Wizard of Oz, these films were. Good was a win. Yeah. And so they were very happy to put in cold storage. And they were pleased with the work that was done. But the other thing that was new here is you had a test. And that's created a kind of competitive environment between all the companies. And as a result, also, the dye stability did improve somewhat because you couldn't measure this. So the next thing I would like to talk is the Polaroid Kodak lawsuit. Because in 1976, Kodak launched the Color Instant Product. And the same year, of course, Polaroid through Kodak. And you had to go and did your spiel and tell us about this. I don't think this is in the high point in my technical career. But it was an experience which I wouldn't want to do again. There's a little bit of history here. At one point, Kodak was a supplier to Polaroid materials. And the head of Polaroid was Dr. Edwin Land, who was not the easiest man in the world to deal with. And the head of Kodak was Dr. Lou Eilers, who also was not the easiest man to deal with. And the fact that the two of them didn't like each other was no surprise. And of course, it was never privy to their private conversations. But the net result was that Polaroid went elsewhere to make their components for their peel apart film. And then Polaroid came out with their peel apart color film. And Eilers, a Kodak, made a disastrous decision. He decided to go hand-in-hand in competition with the Polaroid product. And Polaroid had the field pretty well covered with patents. So the Kodak scientists worked very, very digitally. And for a very long time, getting around, we thought we got around, the Kodak patents. And then they came up with their own product, which I thought was pretty good. The manufacturing of it was just a marvel. The package is quite complicated. And you go in there, and there's only one or two people wanting a very, very complicated plant, because everything is done automatically. Anyways, Kodak came out with their product. And no sooner than they did, that Polaroid did Kodak. So is that true that you said to Dr. Land that on the matter of Polarist Air Base, he didn't know what he was talking about? Well, there was one patent that dealt with film support, which is appropriate for this particular conference. And that was the patent that Land had, which utilized polyester as the film support. And Kodak asked me to be the rebuttal to this particular patent. And there really were two reasons. One was that I was not involved in the establishment of this product, so they couldn't ask me questions about how we went about our work, because I just didn't know. And the other was because of my experience of film base. And our position was there were only two supports you could use, triacetate or polyester. And you do have a film wet during the photographic process. And you break a pod, and the chemicals come out, and eventually it dries. So it makes sense to use the base, which is water resistant, rather than triacetate, which is not. So if you only have two supports, and one is water resistant, one isn't, you don't have to be a genius to pick the right one. You were supposed to be not happy about that, right? Well, it was also very interesting to get a little aside that I attended the trial. It was in Boston. And the first day of the trial, Dr. Land came in. And this is all, there was no jury, it was just a judge. And the Polaroid attorney said to Land, could you tell us about the honors that you received? And Land was a world famous scientist and had many honors. So Land started to recite his honors. And the judge said, well, we have all this written down. Why do we have to go through it again? And the Polaroid attorney said, well, can we just ask Dr. Land one question? So the judge says, yes, go ahead. So he said, Dr. Land, tell me, which of the many honors you got is the one that you thought was the most important to you? Dr. Land, let's see how he looks down the floor. This was a terrible, terrible, difficult decision. The poor man made. You had too many. Finally, after five minutes, he finally came up with some particular medal or some kind. So I put some picture here because you were not always working with your colleague. And this is about the fishing trip in Canada. This was quite a project. You produced those diary there. And unfortunately, we don't have to go into the detail, but everything was planned very, very, very well. Robert, now I'm getting away from science. We're coming back. We're coming back. So you spent 25 years working for the standout. And the standout was also, you are a facilitator of Peter. So you were a very important person in the standout organization. On this picture, there is a lot of names that everybody knows here. In the second row, over to the left is Klaus Hendricks. And over to the right is Peter. There's Henry Willem, there's Klaus, there's David Koper. You remember a lot, right? So this was apparently, it wasn't a shabby group. No. And that was 86. And so in 86, there is another event. There's another event. You retire from Kodak on Friday. And you start working at IPI the Monday, right? That is correct. Because you didn't want to go grocery shopping all the time, right? Well, I retired on a Friday. And I went to IPI on the Monday. Right. And that was the original team of IPI there. That was the total employment. Right. So you met Jim Riley. And of course, Jim had a vision. And you were really complimentary. And you had all this technical knowledge and background that you brought in the lab. And film studio became really the cornerstone of what IPI was doing. And that's just another paper that it was considered to be good by Peter. It was, can you talk about what is essential in this paper? Wow, there's a little background here, too. Do I have time for background? We have a few minutes. Go ahead. Bye. When I first went to work for IPI, all I wanted was a telephone and a desk to continue my standards work. And Jim thought it would be a good idea if I submitted an application, a grant application of the National Endowment for the Humanities to do a thorough study of the stability of the various film supports. That's NICRAe.state, butaree.state, proponate, as I was trying to ask, and polyester. And we got two major grants. And so that was the three major grants. And that work resulted in a half a dozen papers. And it was the most thorough study that had been done and still exists as the most thorough on the stability of the various film supports. And it also looked at the effect of cold storage and elevators. And the one way you predict how materials are going to last is if you heat them. And if you heat them, many of the reactions take place, which are going to take place over time. And that doesn't always work. We're very fortunate for film base and also for the color dyes, as we showed in the earlier slide, that you can use a high temperatures to predict behavior at lower temperatures. And of course that gave more credence to the use of cold storage, which came out in 1970 paper and not only improves dye stability, but improves the base. So the key here in this paper, in other words, all the work in physical property, testing, it was great, it was making sense, but it was not really the best indicator of decay for these kind of materials. Yes, and one of the things which came out of that study was when we incubated the film at the various temperatures then what do you measure? So we measured the strength of the material. We measured the toughness of the material. We measured the stiffness of the material. We measured its tear strength. We measured its fold. All these physical properties which are difficult to measure and also take time. And the other thing that we looked at was the acidity that was developed because when you degrade these polymers, several things happened. You can break up the polymer chain and that affects their physical properties, affects the strength of all the other properties which I mentioned, the toughness. And bingo, right? Bingo, all kinds of bus stop, right? But you also, the side chains, which were shown in some of the earlier slides we saw this morning, you break off acetyl groups which forms acidic acid or better known as vinegar. And so we found that a measure of the acidity was more precise than the measurement of the physical property. And so therefore, you could tell when material is starting to degrade whether because of the, as you well know, the acid which is produced. So this led to the development at IPI of their acid detector strip. These were pluse strips which exposed acid to turn yellow. So I don't know if you know that, but I looked and since the 2003, there is five million, five million of those strips that have been sold on the world. So that is at least five million item and it means way more collections that have benefited from that work. Yeah, Monique here and Dagny Chambourin, Jim Riley received an award from the... So, yeah. Monique is here, Monique Fisher, it's here. So, Peter, that's you, there's 40 years apart between those two pictures. So you're all pretty good. And it's not very long ago this picture. So Jim Riley will retire at the end of the year. So would you apply for the job? I would like, think about it. I've got a serious consideration and I've made a decision. I would, okay, I don't know what to say because you have been a mentor for everybody at IPI and outside. So it has been wonderful. Thank you for everything. And thank you, Sarah, also for being here, for here.