Mitchell Camera

Mitchell Camera Corporation was a motion picture camera manufacturing company established in Los Angeles in 1919. 
History.
The Mitchell Camera Corporation was founded in 1919 by Americans Henry Boeger and George Alfred Mitchell as the National Motion Picture Repair Co. Their first camera was designed and patented by John E. Leonard in 1917, and from 1920 on, was known as the Mitchell Standard Studio Camera. Features included a planetary gear-driven variable shutter (US Patent No 1,297,703) and a unique rack-over design (US Pat No 1,297,704). George Mitchell perfected and upgraded Leonard's original design, and went on to produce the most beloved and most universally used motion picture cameras of the Golden Age of Hollywood under the name of The Mitchell Camera Company. The company was first headquartered on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles, then building a new factory in West Hollywood and moving there in 1930, and finally moving operations to their final factory location in Glendale, California in the 1940s. 
Mitchell Camera Corporation was privately and quietly purchased in mid 1929 by William Fox of Fox Film Studios, just before the Great Depression began, though George Mitchell continued working with the company until he retired in the 1950s. Although William Fox had lost control and possession of his own Fox Film Studios and theaters empire in March of 1930, he apparently quietly retained possession of the Mitchell Camera Company, as William Fox's two daughters still owned the Mitchell Camera Company when the company closed operations and ceased in the late 1970s.
Technology.
Mitchell Camera also supplied camera intermittent movements for Technicolor's Three-Strip camera (1932), and such movements for others' 65mm and VistaVision conversions before later making complete 65mm and VistaVision cameras (normal and high speed).
Mitchell also made a pin-registered background plate projector with a carbon arc lamphouse which was synchronized with the film camera. One of the first MPRPPs (Mitchell Pin Registered Process Projector) was used in "Gone with the Wind". Two- and three-headed background projectors evolved for VistaVision effects.
George Mitchell received an Academy Honorary Award in 1952. The Mitchell Camera Company received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1939, 1966 and 1968.
Models.
Licensed Derivatives.
Certain early models were licensed to Newall in the U.K.
Unlicensed Derivatives.
Certain models were copied in whole or in part by the U.S.S.R., mostly models which were intended for filming animation or special effects process plates, or for high-speed filming. In a few cases, the U.S.S.R. added spinning mirror-shutter reflex focusing and viewing, thereby deleting the Mitchell-designed rackover focusing mechanism and the Mitchell-designed side viewer.
Though the Eastern Bloc standard for camera film is Kodak Standard perforations, that standard was rejected by the very Bloc which proposed it. U.S.S.R. professional cameras consequently require film stocks that are incompatible with Western Bloc camera film, which always uses Bell & Howell perforations.
Eastern Bloc (KS) camera film "will" pass undamaged through a Western Bloc (BH) professional camera, but the images "will not" be registered accurately. Conversely, Western Bloc (BH) camera film "will not" pass undamaged through a U.S.S.R. professional camera (KS), as the perforations used for registration will be damaged.
16mm and 65/70mm films were standardized late in the standardization cycle so these U.S.S.R. cameras in these gauges are indeed compatible with Western Bloc camera films.
Legacy.
Production (sound) models in 16mm, 35mm (4- and 2-perf) and 65mm (5-perf) served as a basis for early Panavision cameras in those gauges.