Now the real question: which came first? The camera or the flex
shaft?
How about independently?
the camera doesn’t have a flex shaft. What it has is a variable
speed permanent magnet ac motor. So does the flex shaft. I’ll bet
that in both the case of Bell and Howell (who have their nameplate on
that motor, same as does Fordom or other earlier flex shaft
manufacturers, whether or not they actually manufactured the motor
itself) and the first of the flex shaft machines, the manufacturer
simply found a stock type motor that would serve the purpose. The
right angle attachment isn’t unique to either of these applications,
being kind of standard whenever someone needed to up the torque and
reduce the rpms of a small motor. Those old cameras originally
operated via a hand cranked mechanism, or an internal spring wound
mechanism that was hand cranked up first, then used to drive the
camera. The motor drive would have been a later modification to the
design, perhaps needed when those cameras were adapted from prior
movie camera use to gun camera use. I get a bit of this history from
old family memory. When I was a kid, my dad was an avid movie
photographer, filming all sorts of home movies, to include a fair
range of pretty adverturous trips, mountain climbing, car rallies
through the middle east, etc. He was using a Bolex 16 mm camera at
the time which was driven in this same way. Spring wound drive, or
simply hand crank, and the operator had full control over the speed.
You could shoot slow frames per second when there was little
movement, or fast to catch rapid movements, thus letting you get the
most mileage from your film. When later shown, you’d have to
similarly adjust the speed of the projector to match what you’d done
when filming… But anyway. Remember old newsreels showing moviie
cameras operating in hollywood at the beginning? Hand cranked. The
Bell and Howell camera you found and linked us to is the later gun
camera version which would have needed a motor drive. It has similar
couplings and the speed reducer, but no actual flex shaft, and would
have been a perfect choice of motor type for that use. For what it’s
worth, I’ve seen similar motors used on old belt driven sewing
machines, and on some of those original type dental drills with the
motor driving pulleys and belts rather than flex shafts. I’ll bet you
that the motor type predated both the movie camera use, AND the flex
shaft use.
Peter
