Bell & Howell Company

Submitted by Al …

(Adapted from The Encyclopedia of Photography ©1963)

The Bell & Howell Company was incorporated in Illinois, USA in February 1907, when a farm boy who had studied engineering at night and a movie projectionist with a head full of ideas pooled their talents to design and build precision motion picture equipment. With their joint savings of $5000 as capital, and a 30’ x 60’ loft on Chicago’s north side as their headquarters, Donald Bell and Albert Howell designed and built equipment that took the flicker out of ‘flicks’ and revolutionized the primitive nickelodeons of their day.

By 1920, the studios of Hollywood were almost 100 percent Bell & Howell equipped, standardizing on the 35mm film width, which was the only size in which Bell & Howell would build cameras, projectors, perforators, and printers. That early equipment ended the confusion of film sizes plaguing the infant movie industry and established standards still used in Hollywood today.

In 1954, when Charles Brackett, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, presented Bell & Howell with an ‘Oscar’ for 47 years of motion picture pioneering, he acknowledged the company’s achievement with this tribute – “Without Bell & Howell the movies of today would still be the movies of yesterday.”

Bell & Howell’s latest contribution to the professional motion picture industry is a new series of fully automated additive colour motion-picture printers capable of making extremely short scene-to-scene colour corrections at high speed, with 72 variations in each of the three primary colours (compared to 22 variations in the earlier monochromatic models).

In 1923, the company pioneered today’s huge amateur equipment market when it introduced the famous Filmo 16mm cameras and projectors. Today the Bell & Howell amateur line includes the Optronic Eye series of 8mm cameras, which features a behind-the-lens electric eye that reads only the light values that will be recorded on the film, ‘Instant Slow Motion’ 8mm projectors which can be switched back and forth between normal and slow motion settings with no interruption in projection, and the Slidemaster slide projector that can be controlled by a cordless remote unit that emits high frequency sound waves to trigger starting, stopping, slide change, and focus.

The reflex sensing system used in the Optronic Eye cameras and the ultrasonic remote control of the Slidemaster projector are original concepts of Bell & Howell, which introduced the first electric eye cameras (1957) in both 8mm and 16mm sizes. Bell & Howell also introduced the first 8mm automatic-threading projector (1958), brought the zoom lens to both 8mm movie and slide projectors (1957 and 1958), and added sound to the 16mm movie projector (1932).

Bell & Howell pioneered the audio-visual field with the 16mm sound projector introduced in 1932. Slide projectors and tape recorders were added to the audio-visual line in 1954 (slide projectors were added to the amateur line at the same time), and purchase of the 16mm portion of the DeVry Corporation’s business added the JAN (Joint-Army-Navy) heavy duty sound projector, along with commercial versions used today in television, education, business, and the church.

Bell & Howell recently acquired 49% ownership of Japan Cine Equipment Mfg Co Ltd, Tokyo, Japan, which is producing Bell & Howell brand photo products for sale in Japan and other markets outside of the United States. An agreement with Canon Company of Tokyo marked Bell & Howell’s entry in to the 35mm still camera field in 1962, and an agreement with E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co marked the beginning of a new colour film for amateurs in 8mm and 16mm movie and 35mm still sizes.

In recent years Bell & Howell Company has diversified broadly. In addition to amateur motion picture equipment, the firm also has full divisions in the business machines and electronics fields.

Below is a sampling of Bell & Howell photographic equipment produced over the years.