Bell & Howell Brand Name Today?

[Janice Glesser]

Weather you are a fan or not...The name Bell & Howell is well known in our hobby. For me the name conjures images of cameras, projectors, viewers, and related photo paraphernalia.

However, this is not one of those conjured images (a gift I received last Xmas )

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

Bell & Howell, like Westinghouse and many other storied American Brands exist today as nothing more than a trademark owned by various Chinese companies. Bell & Howell's A/V division was sold to Eiki in Japan decades ago, and they shut it down and just used the name for some of their A/V equipment. I guess they eventually sold the name.

RCA is owned by Philips, a Dutch/French company.

Sharp in Japan sold their name and technology for televisions in the USA market to a Chinese company which had such poor quality control that they have been trying to get their name and USA rights back. I don't know if they succeeded.

[Steven J. Kirk]

Bell and Howell Swiss Army knife. I love it! Do they make other tools, I wonder...

[Adrian Winchester]

I've often been tempted to use a tool like that to 'adjust' one of my 16mm projectors!

[Maurice Leakey]

Bell & Howell make quite a few useful items.

http://bellandhowell.com/



Maurice

[Paul Adsett]

Remember Zenith, Sylvania, RCA, Westinghouse, Motorola, everyone of them truly great American companies manufacturing state of the art electronic products. Now all gone, how on earth could we have let this happen!

[Brian Fretwell]

Same with a lot of British companies - especially cars makers and breweries.

[Kyle Cognetti]

I occasionally see these Bell and Howell branded things on the shelves, usually at pharmacies and department stores in my area. My very first super 8 projector was a Bell and Howell so I’m very nostalgic toward the name and always think about their AV equipment I’ve encountered over the years. Now if only I ran across a brand new super 8 Bell and Howell while at the store instead of their flashlights I think I’d hit the ceiling with excitement and be asked to leave! One can dream I suppose

[Tom Photiou]

One things for sure, now more than ever our two Countries should get back our own manufacturing. The skills are there, bring back apprenticeships properly and maybe next time there is a crisis we will manage our own economy better instead of relying on China.
Unfortunatly as everyone knows, its all down to money. Cheap imports are too easy to buy.
When i needed to buy some leads to connect my Bauer to an old amp i had to resort to amazon as the shops here wanted a tenner or more, where did the ones from Amazon come from? China, the cost including postage? £2.99. Something is definatly wrong with this.

Were there any British built projectors?

[Brian Fretwell]

Specto for one was British built and Kalee for 35mm.

[Dave Groves]

BTH (British Thomson Houston) was a british made 16mm machine. The 301 appeared in 1947 and cost around £220. It was made for village hall shows and was so well engineered, it rarely required any attention. The company also produced opt/magnetic variations.

[Paul Adsett]

Dekko was also a British manufacturer of cine equipment. I believe they made good quality 9.5mm cameras, but my experience with one of their 9.5mm projectors was dismal:

[Graham Ritchie]

I used this one just last week...in answer to Tom


On the 35mm side of things, the "Westar" projector itself I got up and running shown here was also built in Britain. "Not the lamp house"

[Tom Photiou]

And all built to last

[Maurice Leakey]

I ran two Westars for many years at the Classic Cinema, Taunton, Somerset. The carbon arcs were a Peerless Magnarc.


Maurice