HISTORY

A Brief History of Kinoton's Electronic Projectors

Phillips, the predecessor to Kinoton, began building electrical devices into their projectors with the DP-70 (AKA the EL-4100 or AAII or Todd-AO) in the early 1950's. Their engineers clearly thought a projector's electrical controls were best designed into the machine. In addition to manual control switches, the DP-70 featured film break and speed sensing switches integral to the mechanism. From this point on, all Philips/Kinoton projectors included such sensors and controls. Later, the DP-75 (which was produced by Philips and later Kinoton) included devices to detect which gauge film was threaded and whether or not the magnetic sound head was in use to automatically control the sound system.

In the 1970's, Kinoton introduced the FP 30 ST "studio" projector. This was essentially a standard FP 30 equipped with a special intermittent dubbed the "Kinoton Cross". When activated by a solenoid, the movement "shifted gears" so as to directly connect the intermittent sprocket to the constant speed input shaft. This allowed extremely fast through-the-gate wind and rewind. Built-in electronics synchronized the shifting action with the film's pausing between movements.

The beginning of true electronic projection was Kinoton's electro-pneumatic MC series projection equipment. The MC series integrated mechanical and electronic systems in such a way that film could be run forward through the intermittent and yet reverse in high-speed (bypassing the intermittent) to a specific frame and restart seamlessly. For the first time, a projector had been specifically designed to be controlled by a computer. In the early 80's an advanced model, the MC II, was introduced.

In 1986, the FP 38 EC (electronic control) projectors were introduced. These are fully electronic machines that use a servo-motor intermittent, and were the first electronic projectors to exceed the stability of traditional mechanical intermittent machines. They still are being installed in studios worldwide, and are clearly the standard-bearer in that demanding arena, where quality and reliability are the only considerations.

1996 saw the introduction of the E series cinema projectors, which used a simplified microprocessor control scheme to offer most of the same improvements derived from the EC projectors. This allowed the quality and reliability of the electronic projector to be affordable to cinemas. The most recent developments have been the MP-75E. and SP-75E 70mm projectors, further refining the E series drive with low-mass, water-cooled intermittent motors capable of handling 70mm films with 10 perforation per frame pull-down.