I Finally Process Film

I worked about 18 months on gradually improving developer models before I finally made one that was ready to process film. Pictured are the first actual film processor, and my assistant Cara. I installed the unit at night. My family was in the office waiting to see how it would work. We would then to go to dinner and celebrate my sure success! I loaded it with chemicals, put an exposed film in, and off she went. Developer came into the tank, then the wash water valve turned on, then fix, then the hair dryer that I first used to dry the film turned on. What a masterpiece! It worked perfectly! I was so excited, until I pulled the film out. It looked like s--t! Ugh. Awful. The very first film was a failure! We went out to dinner, me in the most sagging mood imaginable. All of that work, and I couldn't even process one piece of film. We ordered and ate. In the middle of dinner, I got a brain flash! I knew why the processor didn't work.......I didn't turn on the outside water valve! No water came into the tank to wash, so the chemicals were dried on the film! We went back to the office and ran another film with the wash water turned on, and out came a perfect film! The next day I used the processor to develop all of my patient x-rays, and the processor worked perfectly. I was amazed! I thought since I was putting two chemicals into one tank, the chemicals would soon contaminate and fog the film. The first time out I actually ran 50 sets of x-rays before there was any sign of contamination. After improving the wash design, that number jumped to 250. To this day, I don't understand why contamination is not a problem with the processor, but it isn't. Not at all.