Simplex Mark 35mm? pair

[Randall McMillan]

picked up a pair
seems fairly complete
Serial is #23459 Patent 1916

any info or Anything is Greatly appreciated!

will be restoring 1 and parting the other

[Jim Cassedy]

I believe what you've got there is an old Simplex "STANDARD" projector. You might have been confused
by the way the phrase "Trade Mark" is stamped on the name plate, with half of it being stamped before
the word "SIMPLEX" and the other half after it. The patent date isn't too helpful, since it only means that
it couldn't have couldn't have been manufactured before 1916. I know these were manufactured thru
the early 30's, but I'm sure they had been discontinued by 1940.These were first manufactured as 'silent
movie' projectors,and the hole in the door was originally where the hand-crank connected to the drive
shaft. The one you have here has had a sound head attachment added, and the fact that it looks like
it has a sound 'gate' and not a sound 'drum' dates the sound head to appx before 1930. I'm not sure
exactly when they stopped making the "Standard" model, but I recall still seeing some of these in use
as late as the mid 1970's, although I've never seen one with one of the original (no drum) sound
head attachments. One theater I worked at around 1971 or 72 not only was running a working pair
of these, but they still had the original hand-cranks in their parts cabinet.

I'm sure some people will comment that what you've got is nothing more than a couple of rusty
heaps of scrap iron, but I have seen some amazing restorations done on machines of this age &
in this condition, or worse. But it's an interesting project if you've got the time, mechanical skills,
patience, and the tools & resources to undertake it. But it's a lot of work! Good luck!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Are there any labels on the sound reproducer? That's one I have never seen before. Possibly a very early RCA, or a boot leg reproducer. There were lots of bootleg reproducers back in the 1930's.
A rear shot of the sound reproducer might help.

Mark

[Lindsay Morris]

What I think you there for the soundhead is a very early Westrex 206A soundhead. The attached pic shows a pair of the same Simplex Standards that were still running film right up until film releases ceased in Australia towards the end of 2013.
The soundheads are a pull thru type with straight gate with a HUGE flywheel on the end of the constant feed sprocket. In this case as Cyan tracks came along I modified the exciter to use a 3W Red Lumiled and retained the original WE photo electric cell and just bumped the DC polarising voltage up to about 85V DC to raise the output to be almost the same as the when the 10V 7.5A exciter was in use. The sound heads fed into a RCA wall mounted preamp and that had a pot that allowed the DC volts to be varied.
Only issue was the microphonics also increased but as a drive in that only ran monthly by volunteers the cost to do a full red led conversion could not be justified.
The Simplex Standards were used a lot in drive ins over here as the air blast from the modified rear shutter was considerable and the gate was not overly hot when running 75A arcs but anything much over that required water cooling.
This drive in is at Koorda about 240kms north east of Perth Western Australia. It made a conversion to digital initially using a NEC 1600 digital beast with a 4K lamp running at 3KW and the screen light was vastly improved over what we could get with the arc lamps.
That has now been replaced with a Barco laser digital beast and now has even better screen light... it has an 18M wide screen.

The old Simplex Standards just kept rolling along so as you kept them clean and well lubricated.

When I blew the pic up in size I realised that possibly the soundhead is not a 206A but a RCA type which we used to call RCA Mouse Trap soundhead...but either were quite reliable. Cannot quite make out that the gate that closes onto the film in the soundhead is the band type type which the RCA heads used. So a better close up photo might help identify the soundhead type.

[Jesse Crooks]

In terms of age, it's probably a later production date for the standard. When they first rolled out in 1916 they had front shutters, later moving to rear shutters. They did sell rear shutter conversion kits, so that alone isn't necessarily proof of age. A way to tell for sure is that the earlier ones have a single bearing on the intermittent, on the inboard side. On later ones the casting extends past the end of the intermittent and there's a second bearing on the outboard end. And the Simplex bases from the silent era didn't have the mounting point for a soundhead. Those had a bar that extended forward, which the lower magazine and projector head bolted onto. Yours is the later style.

[John Eickhof]

fonepix2015 038.JPG Hi, your Simplex Regular was made mid-year of 1925, the soundhead is either an RCA PS-20 or PS-21 if there is a flywheel about 8" diameter with three narrow V belts and the motor should be on a bracket on the pedistal that machine would have been manufactured as a front shutter mechanism, with the optional rear shutter upgrade added probably around 1929-1930 The first Simplex was made in 1911 with patents granted in 1914 and more in 1916.