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I would like to think his staff called him “Woody” but possibly not to his face –
anyway, the Major had made a 35mm motion picture projector (with the help of his
sons) that he called a Pantoptickan machine and like machines of that time it was
limited to small free running rolls of film of not more than 100 ft. – just over 90 seconds
running time – that fed straight from the feed arm into the projector gate and
intermittent movement. The inertia of the film roll being jerked down 16 times a second
by the intermittent movement caused a very jumpy picture on the screen and often
broke or damaged the film. This problem applied to all movie equipment that used an
intermittent movement.

Below the gate the film would feed freely into a large basket or box so that there was
no additional stress on the film below the gate by allowing the intermittent action to be
absorbed before the film piled up in the box.

Being limited to 60 seconds running time in the experimental cameras and 90 seconds
in projection mode before you had to stop, rewind the film in the box and re-thread the
projector for the next tiny roll – that was just not on – so what could be done to fix this
problem?

The “Latham Loop” provided a
complete answer to the problem and
camera makers quickly devised simple
systems to make use of it.
The Prestwich Camera No. 4 (left) being
one of the first. Followed by the
Warwick Bioscope at the end of the
1800s and the Pathè camera and the
Williamson cameras early in the new
century.

REEL DEALS December 2023 7