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ALBRITTON FAMILY 5 1/2 minutes
9.5mm
1920s, Siam (Thailand)
Shown at Home Movie Day: Los Angeles  Synopsis:
9.5mm films of an American family living in Siam in the 1920s, as well as scenes of a medical hospital.
Historical Background:
From Alan Kattelle’s Home Movies: A History of the American Industry, 1897-1979 (pp. 68-69). Used with Permission of the Author.
In 1922 the [Pathé] company introduced an entirely new gauge of safety film, now reduced to just 9.5mm wide with a single slot perforation centered on the film width at the frame line. The projector, called the Pathé Baby, was launched in time for the Christmas market, and as with the earlier 28mm Pathé Kok, was designed to permit home showing of selected portions of commercial films, reduction printed to the new gauge. Films were sold in small steel-enclosed canisters holding 8.5mm (28 feet) of film.
In operation, the film canister was placed in a receptacle in the top of the projector, a length of film extracted and placed in the film channel. Turning the operating crank fed the film into a glass enclosed chamber at the bottom of the projector. Rewinding was manual, but did not require re-threading the film.
An ingenious method of economizing on film was accomplished by placing one or more notches in the edge of the film where a title appeared. The notch triggered a mechanism that stopped the film advance for three or four seconds, then the film moved on normally. By judicious selection of the number of title frames and notches, depending upon title length, a title might occupy as few as four or five frames, as against 50 or more that would be required by the conventional method.
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The Pathé Baby projector was immediately successful, and thus enouraged, Pathé began work on a camera. The result was the Pathé Baby camera, announced on April 1, 1923. The camera was hand-cranked, but a clamp-on spring motor was available in 1926. Both camera and projector were actively marketed in the United States, but were named "Pathex" when sold in this country.
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