Search for Simplicity

When Charles H. Percy took over Bell & Howell Co. eight years ago, he had one main goal for the company that gave Hollywood its standard movie camera. "We have the Cadillac of our industry," he said. "We want the Chevrolet, Pontiac and Buick too." By last week President Percy had reached his goal. To dealers went a brand-new camera, designed as the last word for amateur moviemakers: an 8-mm. color camera equipped with a tiny photoelectric cell that automatically and continuously adjusts the lens to every light condition.

Priced at $169.95, modest enough to tickle the fancy of the 6,000,000 U.S. families who take home movies and tempt the pocketbooks of the 43 million others still outside the market, the new camera is counted on to help boost Bell & Howell's sales volume from $45.6 million in 1956 to more than $50 million in 1957. By week's end even that prediction looked conservative. In the rush to buy the new camera, many of Bell & Howell's 8,000 dealers were sold out the very first day. The Chicago home office went on a seven-day week, taking reorders that totaled $2,000,000.

Pioneers & Prices. If Bell & Howell's new camera fulfills the forecasts, the company will reach a peak that Chicago Movie Projectionist Donald H. Bell and Camera Repairman Albert S. Howell never dreamed of when they founded the company 50 years ago. Starting out with a $5,000 investment, they pioneered the movie industry's first reliable cameras and projectors, boasted that they "took the flick out of the flickers." Partner Bell sold out in 1921. Howell remained to advise a brisk new management, headed by the late J. H. McNabb, which made a stab at the amateur market with the first handheld, spring-driven 16-mm. movie camera for well-heeled hobbyists.

Moving into the top job in 1949, after a 13-year apprenticeship broken by three years in the Navy, 29-year-old President Percy, McNabb's protege, drew a bead on amateurs who wanted the simplest kind of inexpensive equipment. He brought out a $39.95 movie camera that was $40 cheaper than other models Bell & Howell was selling. It was $10 cheaper than the company's least expensive prewar camera, even though assembly-line wages had risen from 40-c- to $2 an hour. Then Percy went to work simplifying his machines. Simultaneously, he sharply increased Bell & Howell's research budget, and pushed the company into new product lines, such as slide projectors, tape recorders, and for a time de luxe hifi. In Percy's first year, sales jumped 28% to $16.9 million.

Film Line Wanted. Today, with a line of 40 cameras selling from $39.95 up to $1,096, plus professional equipment selling for as much as $14,750, Bell & Howell estimates that 65% of its sales comes from products that were not even in existence five years ago. President Percy is now eying General Aniline & Film Corp., the German-controlled firm confiscated as alien property in World War II, which the U.S. Government is about to offer for sale. Percy wants the company particularly for its Ansco film division, so that Bell & Howell, which lacks a movie film line, can compete on more equal terms with Eastman Kodak Co., which sells both cameras and film. Says Percy: "As things are now, every time we sell a camera, we make a film customer for our competitors."

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