American Historical Ephemera & Early Photography Online

Pathe Freres, Paris, France, ca 1922-1925.

This operable Pathe Baby movie camera outfit comes with its original camera, leather case, and instruction book. It also includes the electric Pathe film projector featuring the Rooster logo, numerous accessories including splicing kits, spare Mazda bulbs, and about fifty vintage films in their original metal cassettes and boxes. The camera, itself, is a 9.5mm leather-covered, center-sprocketed movie camera that was very popular in Europe and the British Empire. The Pathe Baby projector is motor-driven, and in its day, projected movies from cassettes loaded with 8.5 meters of film. The film was caught in a glass front chamber, from which it could be re-wound manually. There is an old stress crack in the glass, but it’s stable.  

The films offered by Pathe were reduction prints of commercial films. A library of over 100 titles was available. This collection of films is notable, containing boxed cassettes of short movies featuring Charles Lindbergh, Will Rogers, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Lillian Gish, Harold Lloyd, and many other celebrities of the Roaring Twenties era.