I was reading the entry on Wikipedia, and it says he invented this tape splicer because he was allergic to Acetate. Was his splicer the very first to use tape?

could well have been Robert, he did well though

I read that a few colleageus saw his invention and asked him to make them one, and it took off.

Leo Catozo was film editor of the famous classic Italian neo-realist feature "Rome Open City" which was partly shot clandestinely during the German occupation.

There was no 35mm film stock obtainable so they raided chemist shops for 50' ft. tins sold for stills photography. 50'ft was just a brief 33' seconds running time at 24 fps sound speed, so Catozo joined up the short ends of raw stock movie film for the feature.

Ingeniously cement-joining film in the total dark would not be possible and would probably jam the camera. So, I believe, this is how Leo Catozo devised his CIR tape joiner. He must have used Sellophane tape and butt joins for the raw stock to run smoothly through the camera.

Ian

Interesting, thank you Ian.

I am sorry, but I have to correct your statement, Ian.
Leo Catozzo, a myth for italian cinema, was not the editor of " Rome open city" the real one was Eraldo Judiconi.
Catozzo was instead the preferred film editor of Federico Fellini's films and he edited the director's most famous films, among that:
"La Strada", "Le notti di Cabiria","La dolce vita" and "8 ½ ". Most of them won the Oscar prizes for the best stranger film.
In this interview, you can look at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFvfczHvhCk,
he explains what is the main advantages of his invention.
First of all its splicer is faster and safer compared to the cement splicer. Another advantage, during editing, when you have to do very often many changes, with traditional splicer two frames were lost every redone splice, with the Catozzo's splicer instead, no frame was lost.
In the same interview, Federico Fellini told that the name of the first splicer was "Cabiria" because Catozzo invented it during the editing of the same film. Catozzo was forced to band his hands to work with the cement splicer, because the acetone base of the glue caused to him hallucinations and allergy reactions. He built its first splicer by hand, but he had to remake some of them, because its collegues always stole his splicer, every time he was absent. Its invention became so famous that he left the editor job, to found the C.I.R. firm, that specialized itself to build tape splicers for every film format.
Nowadays the C.I.R. company still builds its tape splicers. Some months ago, when I was looking for some spare parts for my 16mm splicer, I spoke by phone with his daughter, who is a very kind person.

Many thanks Renzo, I stand corrected.

I bought my first 16mm CIR tape joiner in 1973 from PEC. Projected 'Rome Open City' in 1974 for the local film society so my recollection of the credits is off.

Ian