Bell & Howell
Bell & Howell LLC , based in Durham (North Carolina), is an American manufacturer of high-performance inserting systems , sorting systems for packages and production systems for smart cards . This emerged from Bell & Howell Co. , a manufacturer of film technology equipment such as film perforating machines , film cameras , film copying machines and film projectors .
history
Beginnings
The company was founded as a public company on February 17, 1907 in Chicago by the mechanic Albert Summers Howell, the projectionist Donald Joseph Bell and his wife. Repair orders were mainly carried out in the first financial year. With the "Rotary Framer" patented on August 6, 1907, the company offered a picture height adjustment device for the Kinedrome projectors with which George Spoor evaluated films in and around Chicago. The invention was already a year old. In 1895 Spoor bought into the business of Edward Hill Amet , who had built one of the first American film projectors in 1894-95, the Magniscope.
In 1908, Bell & Howell Co., based in Wheeling , Illinois, introduced a solid and elaborately built perforator for 35mm film. This did not differ in the principle of action from that of the English Williamson & Son (1898). Bell & Howell may have built under license. George Eastman bought Bell & Howell perforators around 1910. The Bell & Howell Standard Perforator made up an estimated 98 percent of all perforating machines worldwide. It was also used by Svema in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, by Ferrania in Italy, by Fuji and Konica in Japan, by DuPont and other film producers.
In 1909 the first camera appeared with two identical lenses, one for the viewfinder and one for recording. Spoor bought eight copies of this film camera, also known as the “black box” because of its black leather lining. In 1910 a continuous exposure film copier was also offered.
Standard camera
In 1911 the first all-metal film camera, the Bell & Howell Standard Cinematograph Camera, Model 2709 , was ready. The first copy with the series number 9 Spoor acquired in the summer of 1912 for Essanay, where the cameraman Jackson Rose received it to work. The next copies were sold from autumn 1912. The "2709" became the ultimate motion picture camera. Its mechanism is still undefeated today, the most precisely functioning one. The camera essentially consists of four sand cast parts , body, door, lens carrier and magazine. Traditional elements are e.g. B. the combined film winding drum, as it was used since 1896 with the Prestwich cameras, the side viewfinder at the level of the optical axis or the cam for the film drive. This was the reason why the product was not sold until 1912, because it had been under patent protection for 17 years since 1895, the maximum term of a US patent at that time. It was the "came Carpentier", the cam disc given by Jules Carpentier to the Cinématographe Lumière to control the gripper.
The Bell & Howell Standard was the first film camera with a revolver for four lenses, with a film guide that practically does not cause static charging of the film, and with a film magazine made of cast light metal in one piece. She was the queen of film cameras until the introduction of the sound film. For the Vitaphone process, Bell & Howell cameras with a 1000-foot magazine were used, operated with an electric motor at 22 and 24 frames per second, for long productions at 22.
16mm and 8mm film
From the end of 1923 Bell & Howell brought devices for the 16 mm film format onto the market, amateur and newsreel cameras , e.g. As the Filmo November 1925 Eyemo . In September 1929, the Bell & Howell Society opened the Rockwell Engineering Laboratory in Chicago. In 1932, during the deepest economic crisis, B. & H. were also in the red. That year, branches each opened in New York City and Los Angeles. Different lines of cine projectors conquered the world, Filmo, Filmosound and the TQ. Bell & Howell also supplied step copiers, splicers, rewinders, measuring devices, a studio rear projector and a long line of devices for 8mm film.
Three years after the Eastman-Kodak company introduced the double-8 format , Bell & Howell introduced the handy Filmo Straight Eight, an extremely compact camera for single-8 film in 30-foot portions on reels, a good 9 meters . For this project, Bell & Howell teamed up with Agfa- Ansco , Binghamton, which the latter supplied the material for »Filmopan«. A year later, the double-8 version of the Filmo was launched, of which there were several models. At the same time, first-class Filmo-8 projectors were built. Later, 8mm film devices were manufactured under license from British Gaumont. After the Second World War, Bell & Howell introduced the concept of the film undermining the lamp house to the 8 mm projector. The company got through the Second World War with products in the military sector, including the military 16 mm gun camera "TYPE N-6A" . In 1946 microfilm devices as well as slide projectors and daylight projectors were added . The Bell & Howell Co. played a key role in the development of the 16 mm and Super 8 systems .
Recent history
From 2003 to 2011, the company, which had been active in the field of courier systems since 1957 with the takeover of the Inserting & Mailing Machine Company , was gradually acquired by the German competitor Böwe Systec and renamed Böwe Bell & Howell . In the course of the bankruptcy of Böwe Systec in May 2011, this was taken over by the investor Versa Capital Management and re- established as an independent company under the original name of Bell & Howell .
literature
- Jack Fay Robinson: Bell & Howell Company: A 75-year History. Bell & Howell Co., 1982, ISBN 0-675-02555-9 .
- International Photographer, Hollywood
- Movie Makers, American Movie Makers League, New York City
- American Cinematographer, American Society of Cinematographers
Web links
- Company website
- "Bell & Howell Co." ( Encyclopedia of Chicago )
- Virtual cine film apparatus museum