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As I just mentioned in another thread, we (or at least I) would be happier today if Super 8 was never invented, and they stuck with Standard 8mm. A lot was discussed in the pet peeve thread, too.
The blunder was not in creating a gauge that allowed a larger image; the blunder was keeping it the same width,...
I agree that the invention of Super 8 was flawed. The Pathe approach of adding 1.5mm to the 8mm "standard" made more sense. Your theory that keeping the width at 8mm was driven by the desire to produce a dual standard projector is interesting. I wonder what other reasons there might have been. I used to run the Kodachrome processing machine at Technicolor in the late 60's. We ran Super 8, Double 8, 16mm and 35mm in one setup. The only change required was to splice (with staples) together different gauges with tapered leader, so we did not have to deal with spockets.
Maybe Kodak did not want the 8mm gauge to become instantly obsolete. In the US 9.5 never became popular, but it was in Europe. Did Kodak ever make 9.5 Kodachrome film? It could have been processed on the same machine that ran the other gauges.
I agree that the invention of Super 8 was flawed. The Pathe approach of adding 1.5mm to the 8mm "standard" made more sense. Your theory that keeping the width at 8mm was driven by the desire to produce a dual standard projector is interesting. I wonder what other reasons there might have been. I used to run the Kodachrome processing machine at Technicolor in the late 60's. We ran Super 8, Double 8, 16mm and 35mm in one setup. The only change required was to splice (with staples) together different gauges with tapered leader, so we did not have to deal with spockets.
Maybe Kodak did not want the 8mm gauge to become instantly obsolete. In the US 9.5 never became popular, but it was in Europe. Did Kodak ever make 9.5 Kodachrome film? It could have been processed on the same machine that ran the other gauges.
My theory is more that it was kept at 8mm width to make it easier to modify existing equipment to produce the film. It led to the blunder to create dual-8 machines that were compromised. It was an untintended consequence that was nearly immediate. The unintended consequence that came much, much later was the fact that the lamps for the best Standard 8mm machines would eventually become obsolete.
The dual-8 machine was probably motivated by the assumption that people would be more apt to adopt Super 8 if they could update their equipment and still be backward compatible with films they already had. The hard cold fact was that sprocketless dual-8 machines ran neither Super 8 nor Standard 8mm well. People still had to buy a Super 8 camera, which was not backward compatible, though. I know of no dual-8 cameras.
Everyone talks about how good some Eumig dual-8 projectors were -- the ones where you swapped-out the sprockets and gates -- but they also made inferior sprocketless machines as well. Elmo also made both styles, but they are rarely talked about. At least one other company made dual-8s where you can swap-out sprockets, and it is branded under different makes.
Those "good" dual-8 Eumigs like the 810D weren't/aren't always the greatest thing since sliced bread. For almost 50 years, my 810D, bought new, never ran Standard 8mm smoothly, until I got a spare gate/pressure pad and tried it. My 810 finally ran Standard 8mm rock-steady. The gates/pads supplied with mine originally were apparently misaligned so the claw was hitting the sides of the sprocket holes on pull-down. From day one, I barely used it for Standard 8mm, so it is not like it was worn out after use. My theory had always been that the claw pin was too small for the larger sprocket holes, and it wasn't gripping the film properly. The other compromise is the single rather than double pin claw.
I don't think anyone was thinking of packaged films at the time, just "home-movies" people took of their vacations and kid's parties, or "This is Pebbles waving hello. This is Pebbles waving good-bye."
Companies like Blackhawk quickly jumped on the Super 8 bandwagon, and by the mid-70s started to discontinue issuing most of their titles on Standard 8mm. Considering that Standard 8mm had been around since 1932, it would have been nice if Standard 8mm-only projectors were still produced into the 70s.
Unfortunately, non-technical business people and marketing runs the show, and the engineers get hand-cuffed.
Nice. Does it take a 16mm-cored reel, too? People are selling 8mm films on those. I had never known those reels existed until about a year ago, now it seems at any given time someone is selling a Standard 8mm film mounted on one. The one I ran thru my Bolex 18-5 as I described was mounted on one.
Sellers get "cute" and for an extra "fee" offer to mount them onto smaller reels. So few people have those extend-a-reel units that they should re-mount the films before listing them. I'd be surpised if even 1, maybe 2, people here have an original extend-a-reel unit with the 16mm hub.
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