Carbon Arc Movie Projector

[Tony in Tarzana]

Anybody care to venture a guess as to the age of this carbon arc movie projector? I saw it just sitting around at the studio where I work. Click the thumbnails for the bigger pictures.

 

[ScionPI2005]

WOW. I have never seen anything like that. I certainly have no clue as to its age. Please, someone enlighten me...:eusa_doh:

 

[Doctor Strange]

I'm no expert on 35mm projectors (I know a lot more about 16mm and 8mm machines), but I'd guess 1940s, or maybe as late as early 1950s, vintage. That's just based on its lines, knob style, signage and so forth.

Projector technology didn't advance all that much between the mid-30s and mid-50s, and this model (Simplex is a well-known brand: I recall seeing ads for them back when I read Boxoffice magazine in the 60s/70s) was probably made nearly the same, with only slight variations, for fifteen years.

It's a bit of a shock for us who are used to a world where everything is obsolete a month after it's sold to recall that well-designed equipment used to change very slowly in past times. Personally, I'm using plenty of photographic equipment from the 1950s that's still in great shape!

 

[Starius]

Man, that is one beautiful behemoth!

 

[Salv]

Some googling reveals that the International Projector Corp. introduced the Super Simplex in 1928. There's a list of their models here - scroll down a bit - and a link to this photo of a 1928 model which looks quite similar to Tony's old rusty specimen:

Just to confuse matters though there's another site which has an undated Super Simplex operators manual with a photo of a projector which, to my eye, looks more like a 1920's projector than the one in the above photo. Although you can't see much of the lamp housing in the above photo it appears more curved than the housing in the picture in the manual and, to my eye, more recent. I'm not sure that this actually is a photo of a 1928 projector.

But anyway, the detailing on Tony's projector looks more 1930's to me - the two parallel chrome bars are very deco, and the font on the ammeter looks prewar.

 

[Boczki]

I know this is an old thread, but I think I can help on this

The projector, what in the business is called a projector head, is the mechanism with the Super Simplex plate on it. This mechanism bolts on top of the sound head, which in this case is a Motiograph Mirrophonic SH 7500. Simplex also made sound heads, like the SH 1000, which came out in the 1940's to complement the Simplex E7 (one generation later than the Super Simplex but overlapped in production). In the USA production of sound heads were separate from picture (projector heads) until 2006 when Strong International introduced the Apogee. In Europe the sound and picture heads were combined much earlier. Originally, there were no sound heads and Western Electric and RCA developed some of the earliest economically successful sound heads. No one thought it would last so the specialized mechanisms stayed separate. The round thing on top with the IPC plate is a magazine. IPC, otherwise known as International Projector Corporation of New York later became Simplex. The lamp house is a Peerless Magnarc. I can't see the projector base or the lower take-up magazine so I can't comment on those, but the bottom line is if you wanted to build this system you would have to call at least three different companies in order to acquire the various components. Of course none of these companies exist anymore, unless you count Strong International, which absorbed all of the companies pictured except for Motiograph.