murmur & shout

Consider Edison’s early motion picture experiments. The inventor recommended 46 frames per second as the ideal frame rate, concluding that “anything less will strain the eye.”

Instead, 24 fps became the norm based on a simple calculation: Celluloid costs money. Less film used means lower production costs. “They wanted to see how little film could you get away with feeding into the camera, because it was a resource and 24 was the minimum,” Watro says. “We’ve been at 24 [fps] for 80 years probably because you had some bean counter saying, ‘If people watch 24 without vomiting, then let’s go with that.’”

— Today in Unexpected Things I Learned About The Movies (via Wired)