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The Pathé 9.5mm Notched Film System
Mike Trickett

To today’s enthusiasts, with full color, wide-
screen images and full surround sound,
these rather simple little projectors with
their dimly lit half metre wide, silent image,
seem nothing much more that a toy today.

Released in the early 1920s when radio still
in its infancy and the only other forms of in-
home entertainment was the gramophone
or the piano, the Pathé Baby presented a
means of having motion pictures in the
home. Sub-standard gauge film and projectors
were not new in the 1920s; a variety of film
If the promotional material and reviews from sizes had been tried and mostly fallen by
the time are any guide, the Pathé Baby - the wayside in the preceding years. Only
Home Movie projector was a popular item – Pathé’s 28 mm gauge (1912) had made any
selling over 20,000 units within the first few impact, basically because it was supported
months. by a large range of films that could be hired
or bought outright.
Pathé’s 9.5 mm system was introduced in
1922, at first just the projector and a fairly
large range of films were offered – the
camera came later.

The films were captive in small metal
canisters, of about 40 mm in diameter,
each holding about 30 feet of film. At the
“normal” Pathé Baby silent hand turned
speed of 14 FPS, the run time of each film
would have been about 80 seconds – but
there was a twist – the Notched Title
System.
This involved a special mechanism in the
projector, which detected a notch cut in the
side of the film. When detected, the
projector declutched the claw assembly,
which stopped the film in the gate, showing
just the single frame. The system was
used for all titles, as well as any static
scenes in the film. The operator kept
winding the crank handle and after about 7
turns, the equivalent of 14 frames, the claw