Bolex

Bolex is a trade mark registered October 1924 for Charles Haccius and Jacques Bogopolsky. The actual company Bolex International S. A. of Yverdon is a Swiss follow manufacturer of motion picture cameras, the most notable products of which are in the 16 mm and Super 16 mm formats. A first company Bol was founded by Haccius and Bogopolsky (a. k. a. Bolsey or Bolsky) in 1925 and Bolex is derived from Bogopolsky′s name. He had previously designed cameras for Alpa of Ballaigues. In 1923 he presented the Cinégraphe Bol at the Geneva fair, a reversible apparatus for taking, printing, and projecting pictures on 35-mm. film.

Paillard-Bolex cameras were much used for nature films, documentaries and by the avant garde, and are still favoured by many animators. While some later models are electrically powered, the majority of those manufactured since the 1930s use a spring-wound clockwork power system. The 16 mm spring-wound Bolex is a popular introductory camera in film schools.

Bolex International no longer manufactures its cameras in series, but produces 16mm and Super 16 cameras for customers on special order.

Effective September 30, 1930 Bogopolsky sold all assets except a few patents to Ernest Paillard & Cie which retained his services until 1935. Then the H-16 camera was put on the market, the 9.5mm version followed in 1936 and the Double-8mm version in 1938. The H-16 was highly successful. Paillard-Bolex introduced the L-8 for the market of pocket 8mm film cameras. With the postwar boom in home movie making, Paillard-Bolex continued to develop its 8mm and 16mm ranges with the H-16 increasingly adopted by professional film makers. The company also made a successful range of high-end movie projectors for all amateur film making gauges.

In 1952, during the golden era of 3D film, Bolex offered the Bolex Stereo: a 3D stereo kit for their H-16 camera and model G projectors. A number of technical changes was made to the H cameras in 1954, above all an entirely different claw drive together with a laterally inverted film gate and a 170 degrees opening angle shutter. In 1956 the first H-16 reflex viewfinder model was brought out. In reaction to the upcoming use of heavier varifocal or zoom lenses and the bigger synchronous electric motors attached to the body Paillard gave it a big rectangular base with three tapped bushings replacing the original single-tap “button” base in 1963 and soon afterwards a protruding 1-to-1 shaft for the ESM motor. A saddle for a 400-ft. film magazine finally allowed the H-16 to be used like professional synch-sound cameras.

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