Charles Merriman Peter (1878–1965) was a partner in The Selectasine Company of San Francisco, California.

The eight partners were, Charles Merriman Peter (1878–1965), Roy Christian Beck (1893–1984), and Jacob Harris Steinman (1881–1933), John C. Patrick Pilsworth (1872-1933), Henry Arthur Pilsworth (1873-1935), Eugene Pilsworth (1878-1917), and Edward S. Pilsworth (1870-1936).

Together, 1914, the group opened a studio in San Francisco where they designed and printed posters and advertising.

The group foresaw the need for a method for printing larger quantities of destination boards and advertising signs for the newly motorized buses, not only in San Francisco but globally. Thus, they set about creating methods to speed up the process.

Together, they invented the first photoemulsion with potassium, sodium, or ammonium chloride and dichromate, glues, and gelatin compounds that reacted to actinic light. They also invented the film positives that we use today. Albeit the emulsion and film positives were substantially different than those used today. They also patented a multi-color screen printing from a single screen. They named their innovation The Selectasine Method and renamed their company The Selectasine Company.

John Pilsworth is cited as being the leader of this team, which used bolting cloth as the means of supporting their hand-cut paper stencils. Bolting cloth was the name given to the material woven from natural silk which for many years had been used for sieving flour in the milling industry. Its ready availability and relatively low price assisted the development of the new process, which they named The Selectasine Method and a company was formed to market the method – The Selectasine Company.

Lieutenant-Colonel Mark James Mayhew, who was the owner of Battersley Flour Mill in Battersley, England, UK, obtained the United Kingdom patent rights from Selectasine in 1918 and set up a similarly named company, Selecticin, in London. Largely due to Colonel Mayhew’s efforts, news of the new printing technique spread and it was adopted by a number of companies in the advertising and signwriting trades. Early development was largely hampered by lack of suitable materials and the screen printers had to solve all the technical problems that the new technique produced.