16Mm Bell And Howell Camera

Some of the guys who operated this equipment liked working at Bell & Howell. In addition to his technical achievements, Mr. Howell also bears important executive responsibilities as vice-president of the Bell and Howell Company, directing the activities of a staff of engineers and technicians, the large laboratories, as well as the general production plant of the company, which employs 1, 000 workers. A guaranteed warranty also suggested that the investment would be worth its weight in captured memories. Bell had helped Spoor develop a new breed of projector they called a 'Kinodrome, ' and the demanding work often entailed outsourcing repair jobs to other mechanics, which led Bell through the doors of Crary's shop on the fateful day in question. 16mm bell and howell camera repair. Above: The Filmosound 179 Film Projector and Speaker, left, and the Filmo Auto Load 16mm movie camera, right, are also part of our museum collection; donated by Donald Gault, whose father purchased them in the late '40s or early '50s.

  1. 16mm bell and howell camera case
  2. 16mm bell and howell camera box
  3. Bell and howell 16mm camera
  4. 16mm bell and howell camera repair
  5. Bell and howell 240 16mm camera

16Mm Bell And Howell Camera Case

Starting with its early "Filmo" brand, Bell & Howell managed a pretty flawless transition into becoming the most innovative and respected name in home movie equipment, consistently making products that were more efficient and dependable than the competition, if also a tad more expensive (a price tag of $150-200 for early cameras basically made it a rich man's hobby). Bell, who left the firm under somewhat acrimonious circumstances just 10 years into its existence. The building is still standing today, having been converted into luxury apartments in the 1990s. One year later, when Peterson followed Percy into a role in Republican politics, his successor—Donald Frey—looked at the analytics and decided Bell & Howell's future owed no allegiance to its past. Most critically, the functional lifeblood of their industry—the physical film itself—was an undefined resource, produced in dozens of different sizes and perforation patterns. He had an intermittently working twin-lens camera already in 1888, made by English craftsmen for him. As mentioned, Don Bell didn't necessarily take this massive new success in stride. Below: 1950 sales pamphlet for the 172-B]. 16mm bell and howell camera box. Much like the first meeting of Don Bell and Albert Howell three decades prior, the tale of Joe McNabb's initial encounter with Chuck Percy became the stuff of legend. To name some, we have the Ciné-Ansco (1929), the Irwin and the Moveo (1930), the Vitascope Movie Maker (1931), the Zeiss-Ikon Movikon 16 (1932), the Paillard-Bolex H-16 (1935), the Facine (1935).

16Mm Bell And Howell Camera Box

And yet... the kid rolled with the punches. Beautiful, lightweight and modern design". 16mm bell and howell camera case. The seller might still be able to personalize your item. The company thus entered the roaring '20s with a breath of new life, as McNabb soon took over the role of president, with Howell staying on as VP and Charles Ziebarth serving as secretary. Single lens quickly interchangeable. Charles halted his campaign for weeks, but eventually returned to the trail and earned a surprising victory. When longtime company president Joseph McNabb died in 1949, Howell stepped into the role of Chairman, hoping to lend a guiding hand to McNabb's 29 year-old successor, Charles Percy.

Bell And Howell 16Mm Camera

This genius was Albert S. Howell. In those aforementioned nickelodeon days of yore, moving pictures—in all their silent, awkward flickerdom—were the most in-demand new form of entertainment in the world. As the folklore goes, the namesakes of B&H first crossed paths in a Chicago machine shop, although accounts of the exact when-and-how vary significantly. "I suggest that the above 'facts' about LePrince should be substantiated by citations where evidence may be found to support these allegations/theories, i. e., public documents, records, publications, ex-partestatements, oaths, etc. It's also home to a whole host of one-of-a-kind items made with love and extraordinary care. "C. Percy, 29, Succeeds J. McNabb, " Chicago Tribune, Jan 13, 1949. History of Bell & Howell, Part I: When Donnie Met Bert. Howell, at age 28, was the secretary and chief engineer. Accordingly, he decided to sponsor Percy as he worked his way through the University of Chicago and a stint in the navy during WWII. When he finally did assume the presidency, there would be yet more hurdles to leap. Positive type viewfinder. Make Your Own CinePictures. From there, it seems logical to presume that Bell became something of a mentor to young Bert Howell in the years that followed, showing him the ropes of the projectionist's trade and eventually offering to go into business with him. Encyclopedia of American Biography, 1938.

16Mm Bell And Howell Camera Repair

After Percy left, the humorously named Peter Peterson took over as Bell & Howell president, and he mostly followed in his predecessor's footsteps, investing in new opportunities and expanding B&H's marketplace into radio equipment, copy machines, and communications tech for the space-age. —Bell & Howell brochure, 1940s. It was the latter who directed the former on his proverbial path to glory. In that 20-30 year span between the birth of radio and the arrival of television, home entertainment experienced another comparatively overlooked leap forward, as new safety film in 16mm brought the excitement of the picture-house into the living room for the first time. Things reached a head in 1917, as Bell—supposedly feeling McNabb and Howell were conspiring to undermine his control of the company—made the bold (or massively dumb) move of firing both men.

Bell And Howell 240 16Mm Camera

When many of the big European manufacturers adopted the Auto 8 cassette standard over the one Kodak had introduced, it seemed like a potentially game-changing win. Albert Howell was more or less urged into partnership and from then on pressed or shall I say blackmailed to give his name for things to come. I imagine he had travelled to America, lived incognito somewhere around or in Chicago, and fed his life work into the young company. "Into this technical turmoil came a young engineer with ideas, " proclaims the B&H brochure, "and it was only when the Bell & Howell Company entered the picture, in 1907, that the early movies stopped jumping around and settled down to stay on screen. "At the suggestion of Mr. Crary, " Bell later recalled in a 1933 interview with The International Photographer, "I employed Mr. Howell to 'refine' my machine and put the design in manufacturing shape. In the darkest chapter of Percy's life to date, one of his 21 year-old daughters, Valerie, was violently murdered in the family home that September by an unknown assailant. The Johnsons, by the way, have not come near Africa before 1920. " The machine was donated by Bill Thomas, whose grandfather originally purchased it in the 1930s. "Human Touch Still Valuable in Making 5, 000 Lenses Monthly at Plant, " Chicago Tribune, Feb 29, 1948. To be fair, the company actually pulled in some of its most profitable years ever in the early 1980s, running vocational schools like the DeVry Institute and a successful micro-imagery division. Considering that the Bell & Howell name lives on today as little more than a zombified trademark slapped onto various infomercial gadgets, it's easy to forget just how significant the original Chicago-based company was not only in the development of quality home movie equipment (like the handheld cameras and Filmosound projector in our collection), but in the foundation of the motion picture industry itself. The story we were told that Martin and Osa Johnson lost a wooden Bell & Howell camera to termites and mildew in Africa is not true. This included professional Hollywood films sold for viewing on home projectors, as well as "personal motion pictures" or "cinepictures"—made by the customer's own hand on increasingly manageable and intuitive home movie cameras.

Despite his youth and rural upbringing, Albert emerged as the standout brains of the operation—a technical savant. The Crary Machine Works on Illinois Street is a popular choice for the "where. Now, a price tag of $130 in 1950 equates to about $1, 300 in today's money after inflation, so while the model 172 was set at a relatively "low price" compared to the old industry standard, it was hardly an "impulse" sort of purchase. A U. citizen since 1882 he lived in New York City and Leeds, England, and Paris, France. While working toward a degree in mechanical engineering from the Armour Institute of Technology, he zoomed through an apprenticeship and started bouncing around local mechanic shops, eventually landing at the firm of Mr. Hamilton Crary in the old Streeter Building on the river. By 1914, the company had expanded to more than 80 employees, with a new large-scale Chicago factory space at 1801 W. Larchmont Avenue, featuring a distinctive clock tower. The company made tiny cameras to record the accuracy of guns and other artillery. Le Prince vanished September, 1890 in France.

For a good decade or so, filmmakers, camera manufacturers, distributors, and projectionists all enthusiastically jumped into their stables without ever properly writing down the rules of their shared game.