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Notched films offer some interesting viewing, The only down side to collecting notched
many of the films depict life as it was in the films is that many people could not resist the
first 20 years of the last century, and many temptation to increase the light output of the
were never re-released with running titles or projector by the fitting larger wattage lamps -
on other home movie formats. the effect of course was that the title frames of
many notched films have been 'cooked',
resulting in warping of the film base or at
worse the entire title frame burnt beyond
recognition
There are many Pathé Baby projectors in
existence, as they were marketed in their
various forms with ongoing improvements
until they were eventually withdrawn for the
Pathé catalogue in the mid 1930s. Estimates
put the number produced at over 300,000.

The film path of the Pathé Baby projector
(lamphouse removed). The notch detector is
pushed to the left when a film is running, when a
notch is encountered, it moves into the position
shown and declutches the claw mechanism.

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