Bell and Howell is a U.S.-based brand of cameras, lenses, and motion picture machinery. Originally founded as a company in 1907, headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. Since 2010, the brand name has been licensed for a variety consumer electronics products.
A Bell & Howell "Regent" 8mm home projectorBell & Howell 16mm silent film projector Filmo 129Operating the Bell & Howell Filmo 129 16mm projector
According to its charter, the Bell & Howell Company was incorporated on February 17, 1907. It was recorded in the Cook County Record Book eight days later. The first meeting of stockholders took place in the office of Attorney W. G. Strong on February 19 at 10 a.m. (10:00 CT). The first board of directors was chosen for a term of one year: Donald Joseph Bell (1869–1934), chairman; Albert Summers Howell (1879–1951), secretary; and Marguerite V. Bell (wife of Donald Bell), vice chairman.[1]
The firm made products for the motion picture industry. The Bell & Howell 2709 was the first all metal, commercially available motion picture camera. [citation needed][2] The 2709 was so expensive that only Charlie Chaplin and three other people owned one,[3] while the rest were owned by studios.
Bell & Howell introduced products that improved the quality of projected images in a movie theater. The Kinodrome 35-mm projector mechanism, introduced in 1907, steadied projected images and reduced the flicker that can occur during motion-picture projection.[4] The 35-mm perforator, introduced in 1910, set the standard throughout the industry as to the expected distance and width of the sprocket holes running on each side of the 35-mm film; before this there had been no agreed upon standard[5]
Bell & Howell developed a continuous film printing process in 1911, that was gradually accepted across the film printing industry.[6][7]
Historically, Bell & Howell Co. was an important supplier of many different media technologies, and it produced products such as:
Newsreel and amateur film cameras such as the Filmo (end of 1923) and Eyemo (1925), and Autoload EE (1956)
In 1934, Bell & Howell introduced their first amateur 8mm movie projector, in 1935 the Filmo Straight Eight camera, and in 1936 the Double-Run Filmo 8. The 1938 Kodak cassette holding 25 feet (7.6m) of Double-Eight film was taken by the Filmo Auto-8 in 1940.[citation needed]
The firm added microfilm products in 1946. In 1954, Bell & Howell purchased DeVry Industries' 16mm division.[9]
Although known for manufacturing their film projectors, a partnership with Canon between 1961 and 1976 offered still cameras. Many of their 35mm SLR cameras were manufactured by Canon with the Bell & Howell logo or Bell & Howell/Canon in place of the Canon branding. The firm dropped the production of movie cameras by the end of the 1970s.[citation needed]
Bell & Howell was a supplier of media equipment for schools and offices. The film laboratory line is now a separate company, BHP Inc, which is a division of Research Technology International.[citation needed]
In 1960, Bell & Howell merged with an Electronics and Instrumentation company CEC, Lennox Road, Basingstoke, UK. This facility produced pressure transducers and other devices for applications in areas such as North Sea oil platforms, the chemical industry, and the Ariane Space vehicles.[10] This division was divested to Transamerica Corporation in 1983.[11]
In 1977, Bell & Howell signed an agreement with BASF to develop a new amateur videotape recorder, which would have made use of a 6.25 millimetres (0.246in) tape on which 28 of parallel tracks were to be recorded with the aid of a fixed head. The machine was expected to be ready by Christmas 1979,[12][13] but did not reach the market.
In the 2000s, Bell & Howell decided to focus on their information technology businesses. The imaging business was sold to Eastman Kodak, and the international mail business was sold to Pitney Bowes. On June 6, 2001, Bell & Howell became a ProQuest Company,[14] which was then a publicly traded company, but is now a subsidiary of the private Cambridge Information Group. In September 2001, the remaining industrial businesses along with the Bell & Howell name were sold to private equity firm Glencoe Capital.[citation needed]
The company merged with the North American arm of Böwe Systec Inc. In 2003, Böwe Systec later acquired the entire company. It was known as Böwe Bell & Howell until 2011, when Versa Capital Management bought the company out of bankruptcy and renamed the company "Bell and Howell, LLC".[15]
In 2010 consumer electronics manufacturer Elite Brands licensed the Bell + Howell brand name to use on optical and imaging products including digital cameras and camcorders, binoculars, telescopes, lenses, and various camera accessories.[16] BHH, LLC has also expanded licensing of the Bell + Howell brand name for a range of products including lighting and security, personal care, tools, pest control, auto accessories and luggage.[17][18]
In 2011 a digital video recorder was released featuring the Bell + Howell brand.[19]
In 2017 the company spun off the mail sorting business, including vote by mail, to Fluence Automation,[20] which was then acquired by BlueCrest Inc. in 2021.[21] BlueCrest had acquired the Pitney-Bowes document messaging business in 2018.[22]
In December 2018, Versa Capital Management, LLC ("Versa") announced the successful closing of the sale of Bell and Howell to Boston-based WestView Capital Partners ("WestView").[citation needed]
Bell & Howell marketed a specially designed Apple II Plus computer to the educational market beginning in July 1979. The modified Apple had additional security elements for classroom use such as a tamper-proof cover. The case color was black but the inside was a standard Apple II Plus.[23][24] The modified Apple II became known colloquially among computer enthusiasts as the "Darth Vader" Apple II for its black case design.[25]
Education Group
Bell & Howell founded an Education Group within the company in 1907. This Education Group created Bell & Howell Schools in 1966. In that same year, the Education Group purchased a controlling share of DeVry Institute of Technology. Two years later in 1968, Bell & Howell's Education Group, via a controlling interest in DeVry, acquired Ohio Institute of Technology in Columbus, Ohio.[26] Over the years, the Education Group has bought and sold large interests in a variety of educational organizations and institutions, including Heathkit which supplied electronics kits for Bell & Howell courses.
Gallery
Specimen stock certificate
8mm Movie Camera with Electric Eye
Bell & Howell 8mm amateur camera Filmo Straight Eight
Bell & Howell Zoomatic movie camera used to shoot the Zapruder film, in the collection of the U.S. National Archives
Bell & Howell 8mm home movie camera, model Two Twenty
35 mm film is a film gauge used in filmmaking, and the film standard. In motion pictures that record on film, 35 mm is the most commonly used gauge. The name of the gauge is not a direct measurement, and refers to the nominal width of the 35 mm format photographic film, which consists of strips 1.377 ± 0.001 inches (34.976 ± 0.025 mm) wide. The standard image exposure length on 35 mm for movies is four perforations per frame along both edges, which results in 16 frames per foot of film.
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the film strip is eight millimetres (0.31 in) wide. It exists in two main versions – the original standard 8 mm film, also known as regular 8 mm, and Super 8. Although both standard 8 mm and Super 8 are 8 mm wide, Super 8 has a larger image area because of its smaller and more widely spaced perforations.
Super 8 mm film is a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format.
The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak, is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated in New Jersey. It is best known for photographic film products, which it brought to a mass market for the first time.
ORWO is a registered trademark of the company ORWO Net GmbH, based in Wolfen and is also traditionally known for black and white film products, made in Germany and sold under the flag of the ORWO brand.
A movie camera is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either onto film stock or an image sensor, in order to produce a moving image to display on a screen. In contrast to the still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images by way of an intermittent mechanism or by electronic means; each image is a frame of film or video. The frames are projected through a movie projector or a video projector at a specific frame rate to show the moving picture. When projected at a high enough frame rate, the persistence of vision allows the eyes and brain of the viewer to merge the separate frames into a continuous moving picture.
BolexInternational S. A. is a Swiss manufacturer of motion picture cameras based in Yverdon located in Canton of Vaud, the most notable products of which are in the 16 mm and Super 16 mm formats. Originally Bol, the company was founded in 1925 by Charles Haccius and Jacques Bogopolsky, the company's name having been derived from Bogopolsky's name. In 1923 he presented the Cinégraphe Bol at the Geneva fair, a reversible apparatus for taking, printing, and projecting pictures on 35 mm film. He later designed a camera for Alpa of Ballaigues in the late 1930s.
Cooke Optics Ltd. is a camera lens manufacturing company based in Leicester.
Pitney Bowes Inc. is an American technology company most known for its postage meters and other mailing equipment and services, and with expansions into e-commerce, software, and other technologies. The company was founded by Arthur Pitney, who invented the first commercially available postage meter, and Walter Bowes as the Pitney Bowes Postage Meter Company on April 23, 1920.
A Super 8mm camera is a motion picture camera specifically manufactured to use the Super 8mm motion picture format. Super 8mm film cameras were first manufactured in 1965 by Kodak for their newly introduced amateur film format, which replaced the Standard 8 mm film format. Manufacture continued until the rise in popularity of video cameras in the mid-1970s. In 2014 the first new Super 8mm camera in 30 years was introduced by the Danish company Logmar Camera Solutions. Most other cameras readily available are from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Filmo is a series of 16 mm and 8 mm movie equipment made by the Bell & Howell Company. The line included cameras, projectors and accessories.
The Victor Animatograph Corporation was a maker of projection equipment founded in 1910 in Davenport, Iowa by Swedish-born American inventor Alexander F. Victor.
A film chain or film island is a television – professional video camera with one or more projectors aligned into the photographic lens of the camera. With two or more projectors a system of front-surface mirrors that can pop-up are used in a multiplexer. These mirrors switch different projectors into the camera lens. The camera could be fed live to air for broadcasting through a vision mixer or recorded to a VTR for post-production or later broadcast. In most TV use this has been replaced by a telecine.
The Gaumont-British Picture Corporation produced and distributed films and operated a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. It was established as an offshoot of the Gaumont Film Company of France.
The Revere Camera Company was started in 1920 by Samuel Briskin, who also started Wollensak Recorders and Opticals.
The Centaur Film Company was an American motion picture production company founded in 1907 in Bayonne, New Jersey, by William and David Horsley. It was the first independent motion picture production company in the United States. In 1909 the company added a West Coast production unit, the Nestor Film Company, which established the first permanent film studio in Hollywood, California, in 1911. The company was absorbed by the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912.
Kodascope is a name created by Eastman Kodak Company for the projector it placed on the market in 1923 as part of the first 16mm motion picture equipment. The original Kodascope was part of an outfit that included the Cine-Kodak camera, tripod, Kodascope projector, projection screen, and film splicer, all of which sold together for $335. By 1924, Victor Animatograph Corporation and Bell and Howell had placed 16mm projectors on the market, so Kodak eliminated the requirement to purchase the equipment as a complete outfit and sold the projector separately. Kodascope was retained as the primary marketing name for 16mm projectors throughout their production life at Kodak.
Herman Adolf DeVry was an American inventor, aviator, and colleague of Lee de Forest. DeVry is credited with creating the first portable motion picture projector, which he called a Theatre in a Suitcase. He was the founder of the DeVry Company.
Gordon Edwin Bradt was an American inventor, designer and the founder of Kinetico Studios.
References
Notes
↑ Aldred, John (October 2007). "Donald J. Bell 1869-1934 and Albert S. Howell 1879-1951". Image Technology. 89 (4): 16.
↑ Williams, David (2019). "Tools of the Trade". American Cinematographer. 100 (12): 92–98 – via Art Full Text.
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