From the Spring 1993 issue of the Operating Cameraman

Albert Howell, an engineer and Donald Bell, a cine projectionist, went into business together in 1907. They were capitalized at $5,000. Their personalities complemented each other. Their first company effort was the general manufacturing, leasing and repairing of machinery. This led to the design and manufacture of a movie projector called the "Kenodrome".

The first motion picture cameras produced by the Bell & Howell Company was a then conventional looking 35mm, wood body, hand crank camera, introduced in 1909. Its unique feature was a very precision film transport mechanism that incorporated a dual fixed pin registration during exposure. One of the fixed pins was full horizontal fit in a perforation and the other pin was full vertical fit in the opposite film perforation,.

The pins were machined to tolerances of one ten thousandths of an inch. During exposure the film at the aperture was impinged on these pins and in that they did not move, there was no wear from the friction of movement.

Less than a dozen of these cameras were made. Although this camera was well received in the industry, Bell and Howell replaced the design with a much more sophisticated all metal camera. Some of their reasoning may have been predicated on the experience of the great travelogue film producers Osa and Martin Johnson who had their two wood B & H cameras destroyed by termites while they were in Africa.

This first B & H camera was called design 2709. I believe this suggested that it was their 27th design of 1909. The new all metal body B & H camera was introduced late in 1911 and was called the 2709B.

This 2709B was and still is, a truly remarkable cine camera. It had an all metal body that was brilliantly designed and executed. Almost all cameras of that period had wood bodies.

The camera featured a refined version of the great pin registered film transport system of the wood body camera. It had a four lens rotating turret which would precisely position any one of the four different lenses in front of the film aperture. The specific lens could also be rotated to a position in front of a precision optical viewer for critical focus check.

The film magazine were 400 ft capacity one piece assembly that was mounted on top of the camera. Its then unusual double rounded magazine soon gave the camera the nickname of "Mickey Mouse Ears." These film magazines had a light trap that was opened when the magazine was mounted on the camera. The camera was hand cranked. The hand crank interfaced directly to a 32 tooth main sprocket so that two turns per second provided 16 frames per second, the prescribed silent camera speed.

Subsequently it used electric motors. Initially it had a simple optical viewfinder but a fine studio type viewfinder was offered later.

The superb pin registered movement was called Unit-I and could be easily replaced with a high speed movement. The 2709B eventually had 1,000 ft film magazines and with the advent of sound movies it had available a somewhat silenced movement.

A dovetail base for the camera allowed the taking lens when rotated for critical focus to be juxtapositioned as of the taking position.

The large 2709B camera's rotary shutter is well balanced and acts somewhat like a balance wheel. The shutter is adjustable for its opening by an external control. It can achieve maximum opening of 170 degrees and can be completely closed. The shutter can be programmed to close or open for laps and dissolves.

The lenses on the B & H camera are in a special micro focusing mount and a wide range of focal lengths were available. The sun shades and special effects accessories were mounted on extensions from the tripod head rather than encumber the camera.

The 2709B has been discontinued for decades now but the old cameras still find use in animation or special effects nowadays. Many cinematographers believe that the 2709B still has unsurpassed accuracy in film registration with its fixed pins. The great Unit-I movement is currently used in some modern cameras.

This author has serial #18 in his early cine camera collection.