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There are many of these Pathé Baby
projectors in existence, as they were
marketed in their various forms with on-
going improvements until they were
eventually withdrawn for the Pathé
catalogue in 1935. Estimates put the
number produced at 300,000. The Lux
(Latin for light) is a much rarer machine,
due to its higher initial price and the
short time it was on the market. The
first version used the unstable zinc alloy
for its gate assembly – these
occasionally turn up – they are fine as a
The only down side to collecting notched display item but useless for projection. The
films is that many people could not resist much rarer, second version incorporated a
the temptation to increase the light output of plated pressed brass gate and are a nice
the projector by the fitting of larger wattage machine to own and will enable the
lamps – the effect of course was that many projection of notched films at their best
notched title films have been ‘cooked’,
resulting in warping of the film base or at Illustrations: Author’s collection
worse the entire title frame burnt beyond Copyright © 2011 Mike Trickett
recognition Geelong Australia

Footnote:

It is interesting to note that some 50 years
after Pathé introduced their Notched Title
System, the German manufacturer AGFA
used a similar principal in their Family
Movie Outfit.
This was a fairly basic Super 8 outfit,
comprising a movie camera with a still
picture (single shot) facility. The
accompanying viewer was a desk top unit
with a rather small screen and of course low
level lighting.

The still picture facility used an ‘electronic
version’ of the notch. This time it was a
small light in the camera which flashed the
black area outside of the image area on the
film when a still was required. The viewer
had a detector which would detect the clear
area on the film and stop the film in the gate
for 8 seconds.