The Kalart Victor Corporation
This is my recounting of an amazing company called Kalart Victor. My dad, Henry, worked at Kalart for 41 years from 1948 to 1989 when the company closed. This is a story that combines some general historical facts obtained online as well as from obituaries. It includes my personal memories of the countless conversations I had with my dad when I was a teen, driving him home from work for many years.
The Kalart Victor Corporation was headquartered in Plainville, Connecticut. They were a manufacturer of cameras, projectors and audio-visual products. The Kalart Company was founded in 1930 by Morris A. Schwartz. Kalart closed its doors in August of 1989. Japanese competition from the new videotape and camcorder technology caused a shift from analog film to the convenience and lower cost of digital imaging. Kalart could no longer remain competitive.
Here is the company's chronological history.
- Kalart Company, Inc. (1930-1957)
- Victor Animatograph Corporation (1957)
- Kalart-Victor Corporation (1957-1989)
Morris Schwartz - Founder
Morris Schwartz was born in Russia and came to the United States with his parents in 1906. His first job was with the New York Times where he worked in the photo department. Later, he was a staff photographer at the Jewish Daily Forward.
In 1922 he founded Kalart in Brooklyn, N.Y. as an industrial photography lab. Morris Schwarts chose the company name Kalart by using six letters from his father’s name:
KALman SchwARTz.
With only an 8th grade education, Morris Schwartz was a prolific inventor. In 1930 he created the first photoflash synchronizer. This enabled press photographers for the first time to take high speed flash photos of indoor sports events with poor lighting conditions. In 1936 he invented the Kalart Range Finder. This was an accessory for the Speed Graphic and other sheet film cameras that provided automatic focusing. In 1962 the National Press Photographers Assn. awarded him their Joseph A. Sprague Award for these and other inventions. He went on to hold over 100 patents in the photographic field.
Morris Schwartz started Kalart in New York City, but at the start of World War II he moved his factory to Stamford, Connecticut. Later, he relocated operations to Plainville, Connecticut. In Plainville, Kalart employed over 300 men and women who made a number of photographic and audiovisual products including the Kalart Camera, Craig movie editing equipment, Victor 16mm movie projectors and Kalart 8mm editing and movie projectors as well as a projection television. Morris Schwartz passed away in 2004 at the age of 103.
In 1957, Kalart acquired the Victor Animatograph Corporation of Davenport, Iowa. The Victor Animatograph Corporation was founded in Davenport, Iowa in 1910 by Alexander F. Victor. He was born on June 20, 1878 in Bollanäs, Sweden.
Victor Animatograph claimed to have manufactured the world’s first 16mm motion picture projector in September, 1923. Eastman Kodak Company claims it invented the 16mm movie projector two months earlier. Which company deserves the honor was never truly resolved.
Here two photos of typical projectors manufactured by Victor Animatograph. The details of the photos are not good enough to determine the model numbers.
The new company became the Kalart Victor Corporation. Before acquiring Victor Animatograph, Kalart bought the Craig Movie Supply Company. Craig made movie editors.
These were manual, hand-cranked film viewers with a film splicer. With Kalart, Victor and Craig products, Kalart had a diverse portfolio of photographic and audio-visual products. In the late 1980's, Kalart was the last American maker of 16mm movie projectors. Nine years later the company doors would close.
Among all the 16mm projectors on the market at the time Kalart made the only projector which fed from the rear-mounted supply reel to the front-mounted take-up reel. The competitors’ projectors fed film from the front supply reel with the take-up reel in the rear. This meant that inexperienced operators or those with experience with non-Kalart projectors often had trouble getting the projector to work. While the Kalart projectors were confusing to operate they were excellent machines and significantly gentler on film stock. Some film collectors would only allow their films to be shown on Kalart projectors.
To Kalart’s credit, the Kalart 16mm projectors earned the reputation of being the quietest of all machines delivering amazing picture quality, excellent sound and sustained reliability.
One of Morris Schwartz’s patents was for the self-threading projector. Kalart developed the Easy-Load self-threading projector. This simplified the operation and took the guess-work out of loading the film.
Here's a closer view of the Easy-Load's film track. I don't think the Easy-Load was Kalart's self-threading projector model. The Easy-Load model simplified threading. All you had to do was slip the film into the curved track opening. I believe this was Kalart's Model 90 projector.
Besides the self-threading projector, Kalart also made a 16mm continuous loop projector. This projector had a plexiglass platform on the top instead of arms for the supply and take-up reels. Inside the plexiglass housing, the film was placed flat in a configuration much like an 8-Track audio tape cartridge. The film was pulled out from the center of the spool as the film spool was rotated, fed into the projector, returned to the plexiglass platform and allowed to wind back around the outside of the spool. As such, the movie never ended and the film did not have to be re-wound. This projector was found in applications such as trade shows and real estate showings.
Kalart manufactured a line of 35mm filmstrip projectors under the Soundview product name. Often, the “sound” part of Soundview was an accompanying phonograph. The audio track of the presentation would come from a phonograph record while the film was displayed and manually advanced on the screen. The cue to change to the next film frame was an audio beep on the record. My dad's assembly line made these projectors.
Click Here for a PDF ad from 1960 that shows the various Soundview models including one with the photograph.
One interesting Kalart patent was for adding a sound track to 35mm film by including the audio on a magnetic coating within a frame on the film. That means the audio frame would alternate between the photographic frames. Odd frames would be film. Even frames would be audio. The patent I read was for a magnetic recording. When I was young, I thought I remembered seeing the audio frame as an optical sound image much like a 16mm sound track but instead of one linear sound track on the edge of 16mm film, the audio tracks on the 35mm frame were in rows like sentences on a page.
Kalart manufactured a black and white projection television called Tele-Beam. They were probably among the first companies to bring one to market. This product was essentially a TV on steroids.
A cathode ray tube (shown in the upper part of the 2-piece product) was pumped up with a very high voltage to produce a super-bright image that was strong enough to be viewed on a projection screen up to 9 by 12 feet large. Essentially, the cathode ray tube was the projector's "light bulb." The CRT faced inward towards a concave mirror which reflected the light outward. That black cone pointing outward is actually the neck and socket of the CRT.
Tele-Beam had a standard over-the-air TV tuner (NTSC at the time) also with baseband video and audio inputs and outputs. The photo above is the lower part of the 2-piece product. This model does not seem to have the TV tuner.
Another product I remember my dad talking about was the Kalart Golf-O-Mat. This was an indoor golf simulator. The player would hit the ball at a screen showing a view of the fairway. Depending on how hard the ball hit the screen the projector would advance the film in the projector to the corresponding view of where the ball would have landed. This was a very crude simulation and obviously done before the age of computers.
Along with Morris Schwartz, the names Roger W. Coomer, Ray L. Marquis and Frank H. Beckman appeared on many of the Kalart patents.
Leonard J. Quartin - President
Another prominent person at Kalart was Leonard J. Quartin. Born in 1920 in New York City, he received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. Directly out of college he began working at Kalart Victor Corp. When Kalart moved from Stamford, Connecticut to Plainville, Connecticut, Leonard was appointed plant manager, responsible for all operations necessary for the production of its photo products. In 1957, he was elected vice president of Kalart Victor Corp. As a result of his leadership in the export market, Kalart sold its product in over 100 countries throughout the world and received the U.S. Department of Commerce Excellence Award. In 1967 Leonard was appointed President of Kalart Victor Corp. He was appointed to the CT regional Export Expansion Council, a Member of the American Society of Tool Engineers, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and had served on the board of the National Audio-Visual Association and the National Association of Photographic Manufacturers. He continued in the position of president until his retirement in 1990 after 53 years of service at which time Kalart closed its doors. Leonard Quartin passed away in 2010.
Kalart had a long-standing reputation for valuing its customers. One Kalart customer commented that he had the good fortune of purchasing a Kalart projector directly from Leonard Quartin at the factory in Plainville, CT. He said that Leonard was a soft spoken, well-educated gentleman who cherished his clients as friends.
Kalart marketed its products worldwide. Their customers included the federal government and military, public school systems.
When Kalart closed, the New Britain Herald and Hartford Courant printed stories about Kalart’s history featuring Leonard Quartin displaying many of Kalart’s products.
Click Here to read these newspaper stories of Kalart's closing. Unfortunately these are scans of photocopies from my dad and do not have the newspapers' dates.
To Leonard’s credit, the company went out with dignity. They did not go into bankruptcy and provisions were made for former customers to have access to parts and service.
It was impressive that the president of a relatively small company was so well-connected with national and international organizations related to the company products and initiatives. In those days, TV stations were using film projectors to broadcast motion pictures. Kalart had a projector that could be used in a film chain at a TV station. This was a configuration where the projector pointed directly into the TV camera. The projector needed to have a variable brightness projection lamp to provide the best image for the camera's Vidicon Tube. It was not surprising that Leonard had the vision and saw the value in being a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).
I could not find much about Kalart's TV Film Chain procucts. In Broadcast Engineering from 1971, the publication had the following.
New Model 0M -300 Multiplex TV Film Chain by Kalart Victor Corporation, Plainville, Connecticut, has Maxi -Media capability in that either 16mm movies, 35mm filmstrip, or 2 x 2 slides can be projected for television from its input stations.
One station is used for the TV camera. In use, either of its inputs can be put "on line" instantly. Optical transfer time is only 175 milliseconds maximum, and audio transfer is accomplished simultaneously with the picture.
A typical combination of equipment used with the Model 0M -300 may include two Kalart Victor Model STV -TB 16mm TV projectors, a Kalart Victor Model PS -65 TV combination filmstrip and slide projector, and a model VR -622 TV camera.
I only met Leonard Quartin once as a youngster. I remember his kind disposition. My dad told Leonard of my fascination with electronics. Occasionally Leonard would offer my dad a surplus electronic item from the factory to take home for me. There was an electronic technician who worked in the design lab. I think his name was Jean Dupuis. He would save outdated electronic reference books and magazines for my dad to take home for me. This further accellerated my interest in electronics as I was reading about advanced topics I would later learn in college.
I still have the 1940 copy of the RCA Radiotron Designers Handbook that he gave me. These handbooks are still selling for over $30 on Ebay and over $100 used on Amazon.
Don Ruli - Plant Manager
Don Ruli worked at Kalart Victor for 20 years. He was the Plant Manager and Plant Control Manager. At the same time, Don attended the University of Hartford evening classes for eight years. He served in the US Air Force, Strategic Air Command, during the Korean Conflict from 1952-1956. He was nominated Airman of the Month and was acknowledged for designing and implementing numerous techniques to better service the B-47 aircraft.
Robert Jean-Marie Valliere - Electronic Technician
After earning an Electronic Technician degree from the University of Hartford, Robert Valliere spent most of his 38 year career working as an electronic technician at Kalart Victor. He was an Airman First Class in the United States Air Force working as a Radio Radar Technician.
Norman Larson - Head of Production Control
Norman Larson was a graduate of Central Connecticut State University where he received his bachelor’s degree in Business Management. He was head of production control for 35 years. He served his country honorably in the US Army during WWII.
Henry Swenton - Supervisor
My father, Henry Swenton, worked at Kalart Victor Corp. for 41 years from 1948 to 1989. He was a supervisor of an assembly line. As I recall, his assembly line primarily made the Soundview line of 35mm filmstrip projectors and probably made 8mm editors.
Henry might have been the last Kalart employee. He retired just as the factory closed. Right after retirement he was called back to the factory to oversee the dismantling of manufacturing equipment for relocation to a company in upstate New York who purchased the assets from Kalart. The new company flew Henry to the new factory to oversee the re-installation of the equipment and to re-establish the assembly lines. I don’t recall hearing anything further about audio-visual equipment coming from this new company.
Henry was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II and was a decorated member of the 4th Armored Division of the 3rd Army serving under Gen. George Patton. Henry received the Purple Heart for being wounded in action while rescuing a fellow soldier from a burning tank.
My Personal Experience with Kalart
Of the people I mention in this writing I have only met company president Leonard Quartin. I was only a youngster at the time. The other names in this writing were those mentioned by my dad as his co-workers and friends.
My dad would occasionally work a few hours on Saturday mornings to earn some overtime. He was an assembly line supervisor. As a supervisor he was never afraid to do mundane tasks like sweeping the floors and emptying the trash. On Saturdays he would prepare the assembly line to start up on Monday mornings. He would also catch up on any production deadlines by assembling products himself so they could meet a Monday shipping date.
There were several times my dad would bring me to work on Saturdays. I was in grade school at the time. My visits would depend on his workload and how much production activity would be happening. I got to see up-close the many Kalart products in various states of assembly. I loved these visits.
My favorite part was seeing all those amplifiers for sound movie projectors lined up on the bench being burned-in for reliability testing. In the 1960s they used vacuum tubes. There was a distinct electronic smell in the air from the glowing tubes and heated varnish in the transformers.
Here is a rear view of the amplifier showing a combination of point-to-point wiring along with very basic printed circuit board designs.
Kalart used a solid, industry-standard amplifier design. Their amplifiers produced modest and clean power with excellent fidelity. They used a pair of 6973 tubes in the output stage. These tubes were designed by RCA to be a proprietary replacement for the EL84. They are more robust, run at a higher plate voltage and have a reputation of providing a warmer and more faithful audio reproduction. They were used in many guitar amplifiers of the day. Many musicians can tell the audible difference between the tubes. Some companies chose a less-expensive alternative such as the 6BQ5.
The driver stage uses the standard 12AX7. Many companies woud have used the 12AX7 as the preamplifier too. Kalart chose the more expensive 7025. The 7025 was considered to be a more rugged version of the 12AX7. It also had lower noise level than the 12AX7. This was the main reason to use it. In projectors, the sound track is read off the edge of the film by a photoelectric cell illuminated by an exciter lamp. From an audio amplifier perspective, taking an audio signal from the photocell is similar to taking an audio signal from a microphone or phonograph cartridge. The signal is very low in amplitude so the amplifier needs to make it stronger. The signal is very weak and subject to interference from background noise. The amplifier will amplify the signal plus the noise. This noise could come in from poorly shielded cables, improper shielding of the photocell, electrical noise generated within the projector and even from electromagnetic fields in the room from nearby motors or electric equipment. Vacuum tubes introduce noise themselves. This could best be explained as the faint background hiss you hear when you listen closely to a speaker connected to a tube amplifier that is powered on but not playing any audio. If you turn up the volume when the phonograph is not playing a record you will hear the hiss increase in volume. This is probably the extra noise coming from the preamplifier stage and associated cables to the phonograph. In chosing the 7025 tube, Kalart ensured that the preamplifier stage had the lowest possible noise level. You will notice the metal tube shield on the 7025. This further eliminated noise pick-up.
Another consideration for tube choice is microphoncs. Microphonics happens when a tube is susceptable to generating noise from being mechanically vibrated. When the tube's elements vibrate, it changes the electrical characteristics of the tube. The vibration changes the audio signal being amplified. In essence, the tube becomes a microphone. If you bang on the tube you will hear the banging noise in the speaker. This is most undesirable in a projector since there is a lot of mechanical vibrations and noises going on in there. The 7025 tube was an excellent choice.
This is the schematic diagram of the 15 watt amplifier shown in the previous images used in the Model 75-15 projector shown below. From the schematic you may notice another noise reduction technique. The filaments of the 7025 and 12AX7 tubes have their center taps grounded. They are also fed from a grounded center tapped winding on the transformer. Because the filaments are powered by AC there is the possibility that some AC noise could be introduced into the audio. By center-tapping everything to ground, a balanced system is created for the AC. This provided a common-mode rejection that almost neutralizes any noise that might come from the filament power source. It also appears that the photocell exciter lamp is powered from the balanced filament power. Another great design.
Over time my dad would bring home various surplus amplifier chassis and parts. Eventually I would construct working amplifiers that became part of my personal stereo system. When I became a Ham Radio operator I found similar amplifier designs within my transmitters. Instead of powering a speaker, the amplifier varied the transmitter power.
The Model 75 was one of the flagship 16mm projectors. The 6x9 speaker is in the removable cover. You can see the amplifier from the previous images installed on the left side of the projector.
Here is a YouTube Video of a Model 70-15 projector in operation.
Click Here to view the Model 70-15 Service Manual.
As an upgrade, Kalart offered this 12 inch high fidelity speaker in a nice, rugged cabinet. As I recall, the speaker element was a very high quality unit with a large magenet. This was a big improvement over the 6x9 speakers built into the projector's cover especially when used in an auditorium.
Here is one of the Kalart 8mm film editors. The original design had the editor mounted on a wooden base. The base was placed flat on the workspace and the editor pivoted upward at a 45 degree angle for viewing. The hand crank on the right is used to advance the film. The film splicer is seen in the lower middle. Remember, before computers and digital imaging, motion pictures were captured on film. To edit the video, one would actually cut a section out of the film and splice the ends together. That's what the splicer was for. The splicer had a cutter to cut the film. Then the two remaining pieces would be mounted to each side of the splicer. Ther was a retractable moving block that had a surface like a file. Moving the block back and forth across the leading edge of the film would grind off the emulsion so that the glue could take hold. A thin line of film cement would be placed on the film edge. When the other side of the splicer was closed, both pieces of film would be accurately joined together.
Here is a YouTube Video of a Kalart editor in operation!
The round hole in the upper part of the wooden base was where the bottle of cement could be held.
A later version of the editor was made without the wooden base. This provided a more modern and elgant look. Eventually, the Super-8 format replaced the standard 8mm film. Super-8 had frames with a larger frame size and better resolution over standard 8mm. This required new equipment design.
One of the neat designs of the Kalart editors was how they eliminated the shutter. The images on motion picture film do not actually move. They are sequential pictures taken very quickly as the subject is moving. In order to "play back" the film, the images have to be "flashed back to you" in sequence. In projectors, this is done with a shutter. Here's how it works.
- The projection lamp is blocked with the shutter (a plate)
- The film is moved into the aperature
- The film is stopped
- The shutter is opened to allow the light through
- The shutter is closed to block the light
- The the next frame of the film is moved into the aperature
- Jump to step 3 and repeat
As you can see, the film has to be stopped to display each image. This happens 24 times per second with 16mm film. If you did not close the shutter, the projected image on the screen would appear to streak or blur because it would be displaying the film as it was in motion between frames.
24 frames per second was chosen because of persistence in the human eye. If you chose a slower speed, the human eye would perceive annoying flickering of the image.
Anyone who ever threaded a movie projector knows there needs to be a loop of film above and below the projection area. This is exactly because the film needs to physically stop moving during projection of the frame. The film frame at the aperature stops but the rest of the film feeding into the projector from the supply reel and leaving the projector to the take-up reel does not stop at all. That means that the loops of film before and after the aperature are taking turns compensating for the still frame. The upper loop gets shorter while the lower loop gets longer. Then the upper loop gets longer while the lower loop gets shorter. The shortening and lengthening is only by the amount of the heigth of one frame on the film.
There is an interesting consideration about these film loops. For 16mm film, the optical sound track is recorded 26 frames ahead of the corresponding image frame. This is because the place where the projector "reads" the sound track is located after the place where the picture frame is projected. If the loops are too long or too short, the audio will be slightly out of synchronization with the picture. This would be noticeable when a person's lips are out of sync with their voice.
Kalart did not use a shutter or stop the film in their editor viewers. Instead, they used a square rotating glass block positioned in the aperature. The glass block rotatation was precicely synchronized with the film motion. The block position was fine-tuned so that when the flat part of the glass was parallel with and alinged with the current film frame that the image projected on to the screen was "framed" properly to the screen. There was no flicker with this system until you advanced the film very slowly with the hand crank. Even then, the flicker was a gentle transition and not unpleasant to the eye. It was very ingenious.
This is the Craig Master Splicer. Here's how it works. A section of film is clamped into the left side, emulsion side up, by closing the flap. On the right side, the inner flap is the cutter. It is lowered to cut the film that is clamped on the left. The film will be cut flush with the flap's metal edge. Next, the scraper is raised out of its hole in the base. Like a file or sandpaper, the scraper is rubbed back and forth on the short edge of the film that is clamped on the left to remove the emulsion. That is so the glue can bond to the film. Now the film clamped on the left is ready. The other piece of film is clamped between the two metal flaps on the right, emulsion side down. A fine strip if film cement is applied to the edge of the left film that is prodruding from the plate. When the right flaps are closed onto the base, the right film will be cut by the shearing plates and will be pressed onto the left film that has the cement. When the sement dries, the covers are opened and both pieces of film are joined. The splice is an overlap joint.
On 3/29/1979, a U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for KALART VICTOR. This trademark is owned by KALART VICTOR CORPORATION,
Plainville , 06062. The USPTO has given the KALART VICTOR trademark serial number of 73209395.