Bell & Howell

Bell & Howell is a U.S.-based former manufacturer of motion picture machinery, founded in 1907 by two projectionists, and headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. The company now provides inserting and finishing solutions for letters and parcels, document processing, microfilmers, scanners, and financial services. The "Bell & Howell" trademark is also licensed to makers of various electronic consumer products.

According to its charter, the Bell & Howell Company was incorporated on February 17, 1907. It was duly recorded in the Cook County Record Book eight days later. The first meeting of stockholders took place in the office of Attorney W. G. Strong on February 19 at 10 a. m. The first board of directors was chosen for a term of one year: Donald Joseph Bell (1869-1934), chairman; Albert Summers Howell (1879-1951), secretary; and Marguerite V. Bell (wife of Donald Bell), vice chairman. Austin Delaney was president of Bell and Howell in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s before moving with his family from England.

Historically, Bell & Howell Co. was an important supplier of many different media technologies. The firm built its name making products such as:

In 1934, Bell & Howell introduced the first light weight amateur 8-mm movie camera, in which the film was loaded in a cassette that allowed daylight loading and unloading.

Although known for manufacturing their film projectors, a partnership with Canon between 1961-1976 added still photography to their product lineup - their 35mm SLR cameras were manufactured by Canon with the Bell & Howell logo in its place. The firm dropped the production of movie cameras in the early 1970s.

Bell & Howell is a supplier of media equipment for schools and offices. The film laboratory line is now a separate company, BHP Inc, which is a division of Research Technology International.

The firm added microfilm products in 1946. It purchased University Microfilms International in the 1980s. UMI produced a product called ProQuest. In the 2000s, Bell and & Howell decided to focus on their information technology businesses. The imaging business was sold to Eastman Kodak and the international mail business was sold to Pitney Bowes. On June 6, 2001 Bell & Howell became ProQuest Company, which was then a publicly traded company, but is now a subsidiary of the private Cambridge Information Group. In September 2001, the remaining industrial businesses, along with the Bell & Howell name, were sold to private equity firm Glencoe Capital.

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