The need sometimes arises in military operations to secure prints ready for examination within a few minutes after the receipt of the negatives. Even the 15 or 20 minutes within which a negative can be developed and a wet print taken may be considered too long. While such occasions are probably more apt to occur in popular magazine stories than in actual warfare, it is important to have available methods of producing prints with an absolute minimum of delay. This need is met to some degree by a direct print process, commercially exploited under the name of "Positype".

In this process the exposure is made directly on a sensitized paper or card, which is developed, the image dissolved out, the residue exposed, and again developed; thus furnishing a positive picture (reversed right and left). The time necessary to develop a print ready for examination need not be more than three minutes. Only a single print is available, but this is all that would be called for under the extreme conditions suggested. If later, copies are desired they may be made by the same process.