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This thread is so interesting that I had to add my two cents.
I was an AV guy in high school and got to use and figure out all that great old equipment. Bell and Howells, Califones, Beselers, DuKanes, Audiotronics, Wollensaks and even a Webcor reel-to-reel. I worked in the high school media center for two years during study hall and went on to repair that equipment as a career after college. First in my own business and then for the school system as their first repair technician.
I don't think they ever threw anything away at my high school. They still had IBM electrics from the early 1950s when the school was built, and this was 1975-76. And they still worked great, but nobody wanted to use them but me.
I too remember the bad sound from a tinny little speaker sometimes. I also remember seeing 16mm projectors that were rarely used because the Bell and Howells threaded automatically and they were on carts that went out into the classrooms. Those old projectors just sat in the corner most of the time.
We had a rather temperamental media lady and she must have gotten even with our French teacher one day--who knows, maybe she put in a last-minute request? I walked into the classroom one day to discover the RCA 16mm projector set up and ready to show a film.
It was a National Geographic film, with that wonderful theme song at the first. That RCA projector had a separate speaker (with a red RCA logo in a metal grille) and it was working perfectly. Such wonderful sound! I was awestruck. It actually had bass. I've never forgotten that moment in time. A projector from the 1950s working perfectly in the 1970s and better than the new projectors too.
Our science teacher, who was more like a mad scientist, had a brown Bell and Howell 16mm with a door on the side. He was the only teacher who would put up with threading it. I learned how to thread all of them and that was fun. He also had a huge blue overhead projector.
It's amazing how easy to service all that old equipment was. I could figure out how to repair it even as a high school kid.
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