ad for an electrically driven 8mm amateur movie camera
Toronto. In May of 1939, Popular Mechanics did an article on a nameless camera that used an electric motor rather than the usual spring wound affair. Its ‘fresh egg’ was allowing a full 25 foot spool of film to be exposed in a single run and still have power left over.
The makers must have felt that frequent winding to expose even 25 feet of film in short spurts limited an amateur’s creativity. To compete on price, the rest of the camera was rather basic – a fixed f/2.5 lens, single 16 frame per second shutter, etc.
I was unable to track down the maker – or country of manufacture. My thanks to good friend, George Dunbar for suggesting this article on the burgeoning amateur movie business in early 1939. This along with many other great ideas suddenly stopped when WW2 began that fall.
The title of this post is a riff on the futuristic book (1962) and film (1971), “A Clockwork Orange“.
