Eugen Bauer (company)

Eugene Bauer
legal form	GmbH
founding	1905
resolution	1992
Reason for dissolution	Dissolution by the parent company
Seat	Stuttgart
Branch	Movie projectors

The Eugen Bauer GmbH , also known as cinema-Bauer was a German manufacturer of Home and movie projectors, most recently as the daughter of Bosch -Konzerns. The company was founded in 1905 by Eugen Bauer in Stuttgart .

Foundation in Stuttgart

The trained precision mechanic Eugen Bauer (1879–1958) began in Stuttgart in 1905 to specialize in the field of film playback technology. One day he was repairing a French Pathé film projector at the first Stuttgart cinema owner Felix Bayer. In doing so, he took up Bayer's suggestion and began developing and manufacturing film projectors himself.

In 1907 Eugen Bauer constructed his first film projector. In the following year he received orders to equip two more cinemas. The Bauer projectors were convincing due to their reliability and had a decisive improvement, because the finished film was now wound on a reel. As early as 1914, Bauer brought his third model onto the market, which was characterized by a built-on diet device, a so-called Dialux device for demonstrating positive advertising. In 1914, Bauer already had ten employees and mechanics and, besides Germany, also delivered to other European countries.

The First World War marked a slump in the development of cinematography: Most companies did not survive this time, and Bauer also had to accept interventions in his company: the workshop was used for armaments purposes and Eugen Bauer was called up for military service. From 1919, Bauer began to rebuild his company. Further new developments in the field of cinema projectors followed. In 1925 he achieved a great success with the left-hand projector: the machine made it possible for the first time in the world to continuously show a film via two projectors, a right-hand machine and a mirror-image left-hand machine that could be operated by just one person.

Relocation to Untertürkheim

Type plate of the Bauer B14 with the reference to Untertürkheim and Made in Germany

Because the factory premises in Gartenstrasse in Stuttgart were becoming too small, the company moved to Paulinenstrasse in 1924, in 1928 the factory moved from the city center to the Untertürkheim district and the company was converted into a GmbH.

Takeover by Robert Bosch GmbH

1928 was the year in which the sound film replaced the silent film . The films were now accompanied by a record . Eugen Bauer and some of his 65 employees solved the synchronization problems of picture and sound with the needle-tone device . With the optical sound method it was finally possible to record the sound directly onto the film.

Bauer had become the market leader in the field of movie projectors and exported around 75 percent of the devices abroad. This made the company attractive enough for Robert Bosch GmbH to gradually acquire it from 1932. As a Bosch subsidiary, the company was now known as Kino-Bauer . Cinema machines for different movie theater sizes were produced and brought onto the market under distinctive names such as Standard 5 , Standard 7 and Super 7 ; Transportable suitcase cinema machines such as the Sonolux I and Sonolux II for schools and traveling cinemas were built.

In 1939 the company employed 300 people. During the Second World War , production continued to be reduced, but towards the end of the war production came to a complete standstill. After the war, Bauer started with 40 employees in 1946, and from 1949 production was back in full swing. In the first post-war years, Bauer was the only manufacturer of cinema machines in Germany ( B8 ). The heyday of German cinema and the invention of open-air cinema in the 1950s brought another breakthrough for Bauer; this through the cooperation of Bauer-Projektionstechnik with sound film sound systems from Siemens .

At the end of the 1950s, Bauer machines set the cinema standard worldwide. In 1972 Kino-Bauer presented the first punch card-controlled projector system for movie theaters (U-4 system) at the photokina .

Film cameras for amateurs

In addition to the professional projectors, Bauer had already started to create a second mainstay in the successful market for 8 mm cameras for amateurs in the 1930s. However, the war prevented the success of the camera for the 8 mm Movex cassette, which was brought onto the market in 1937. In 1953 Bauer brought the double-eight camera onto the market. They and the later developed Super-8 film sets established Bauer's rise to become the world's top-selling amateur camera manufacturer and allowed the amateur division's share of sales to climb to 75 percent in the 1960s. In addition, Bauer now also produced 35 mm single-lens reflex cameras , slide projectors and flash units .

Downfall and Closure

The end of Bosch photo cinema came with the arrival of television in private households in the 1970s and the mass death of large cinemas. Bauer stopped producing film projectors in the early 1980s. The amateur film sales market also collapsed since the late 1970s when cheaper competing products from Asia flooded the market. Kino-Bauer reacted to this with a restructuring, the company became a pure sales company for film projectors, video and flash units.

The foreign companies were given up, the Untertürkheim buildings were sold to Daimler-Benz AG in 1984 , and in 1992 the Bosch photo cinema product area was completely dissolved.

swell

BOSCH GmbH, magazine on Bosch history 2005, pages 10–13, cinema dreams come true - world fame with film projectors