Page 22 - 2015-09

THE PATHÉ COQ D’or 9.5mm PROJECTOR Mike Trickett

The French made Pathé Coq D’or (translation: Golden Cockerel) was produced around 1937 as
a “do everything projector”.

To understand just what
Pathé had in mind, we
need to look back to
Pathé’s original Home
Movie projector, the
Pathé Baby (1922). It ac-
cepted only 30 ft enclosed
cassettes of film (runtime
approx. 3 minutes). The
film also had an unusual
‘film saving’ arrange-
ment - the Notched Title.
Instead of having, maybe
20-30 frames of film to
display a title or still im-
age, a notch was cut into
the film adjacent to the
title frame, the projector
stopped for a few seconds
on the single frame, and
them restarted again, if
there were a lot of titles
and stills in the film, the
runtime from the 30 ft of
film could exceed 15 minutes.
As time moved on, the need for longer films became evident. The next model Baby appeared with
the capacity increased to 60 ft. By the end of the 1920s. Pathe had produced a “super attachment”
for the machine, which allowed 300 ft open reel films to be projected.
Now back to the Coq D’or. This
was Pathé’s “do everything pro-
jector”. It would accept 30 ft and
60 ft cassettes as well as 300 ft
open reels of film. It had a
notched title device, an improved
light source, with a built-in
light/heat shutter to prevent film
damage when the film was sta-
tionary The basic model was
hand turned, a motor option was
also available.
The lamp house hinged back during
threading
22 REEL DEALS September 2016