All images are from my collection
Optica 35 mm projector, ca. 1918-'20.
This is the real home cinema outfit from the beginning of the
twentieth
century. Expensive and well made. Apart from specially made
nonflam-
mable films edited nitrate cinema prints were sold for projectors
like
these, which could make it an explosive hobby.
This Pathe filmstrip projector uses strips of stencil-colored
images
28 mm wide which have to be inserted in a bakelite cassette, which
can also be used as a separate viewer (1900-1920)
Pathe-baby, ca 1923-'25. Just pop your cassette in the projector and turn the crank!
When there's a notch in the film, it's made to pause for a while, so that text titles
only need to be a few frames long; that way the cassette's playing time is extended a
lot. When people wanted more light in their projectors, and a bigger projected image,
Pathe had to abandon that system, and they also supplied new titles to be spliced into
all their prints. They had a huge film catalogue (Abel Gance's "Napoleon" took more than
70 cassettes), and some of the films were stencil-colored.
Lapierre 9 1/2 mm projector, thirties: this elegant projector has a smooth-running
mechanism with a maltese cross. But the construction is strange: the light has to
turn a corner, it hits the film via a small mirror.
The British Bingoscope projector was made by Leon Rees, London from 1939 till 1948
and it was named after cartoon dog Bingo, although it was sold with some Disney films.
Mechanically it wasn't much, it was really a toy.
Eka Record 16 mm toy projector, German, thirties.
"Funny" 16 mm toy projector, German, thirties. With papier mache
Charlie
McArthur (1930).
"Piccolo", German 16 mm toy projector, thirties.
Lapierre projector from the fifties which can be used for both 8 and 9 1/2 mm.
Two Dutch filmstrip-projectors from the fifties-early sixties.
Belgian Cinette 16 mm toy projector, fifties or sixties.
It has no take-up reel; the film just spills onto the floor.
Also see bottom of this page.
A lot less sturdy and made in Hong Kong, this small plastic projector's whole mechanism con-
sisted of a little hook on a spring which caught the film's perforation. The same system was
used in toy viewers of the time. The kids saw a lot of movement, but little film!
