There are 2 things I thought would be interesting to share this week. Back in the mid-1980’s, I was buying equipment from a fellow who lived in Sacramento, and one of the things that was included in the pile of stuff was a set of the shop blueprints and handwritten notes from the Twentieth Century-Fox camera department. These blueprints and pencil sketches cover most of the parts and pieces that went into building the Fox Cine Simplex camera.
Years later I was able to find an original maintenance manual which documents that there should be, somewhere in the depths of the movement, a leather bearing sleeve that is used to maintain lubrication, as well as silence one of the cams. So I was looking through the blueprints to try to identify the location of this part to complete servicing the movement. In the process, I stumbled upon a series of blueprints with the notation “Used on cameras #1-#17 only”. So at this point, it seems fair to say that at least 17 cameras were manufactured. Several people have asked how many cameras were built. Some indication was that 25 cameras were ordered, but we haven’t found any written documentation to confirm that number.
The 2nd thing I would like to share is a wonderful film produced by Fox that introduces the builders of the Fox camera and demonstrates all of its major features: https://bit.ly/3lRrnfx. Many thanks to my friend Roy Wagner for saving this film and sharing it on YouTube, as well as guiding me to it.