Background
Howell was born in 1879, in West Branch, Mich. , a small lumbering community. His parents, Marquis de Lafayette Howell and Helen Leach Summers Howell, moved to a farm in Indiana in 1890. Five years later they settled in Chicago.
Howell was born in 1879, in West Branch, Mich. , a small lumbering community. His parents, Marquis de Lafayette Howell and Helen Leach Summers Howell, moved to a farm in Indiana in 1890. Five years later they settled in Chicago.
Howell was apprenticed as a machinist with the Miehle Printing Press Company in Chicago. Serious, hardworking, and ambitious, he graduated from high school by attending night classes and then enrolled in evening courses at the Armour Institute of Technology. He furthered his knowledge of machine shop techniques while making parts for car-sealing and berry-box machines.
In 1905, a tool and die technician for the Crary Machine Works, a jobbing shop that built and repaired motion-picture equipment for Don J. Bell. Bell distributed and kept in repair the film machines required by George K. Spoor, a producer who exhibited his films through the Orpheum Theatre Circuit. Howell designed a 35-millimeter movie projector for Bell with a rotary framer that eliminated flicker and thus reduced eye fatigue.
In February 1907 the marketing and administrative abilities of Bell were joined with the technical expertise of Howell to form the Bell and Howell Company. Howell's work during the next four years provided both the technical precision and the standardization of equipment that made possible the mass distribution of motion pictures. He possessed the qualities of a fine craftsman: admirable patience and modest disposition were wedded to a perseverance and a love of detail that resulted in precise workmanship and highly marketable improvements.
The 35-millimeter projector, perforator, camera, and printer were the most important machines that Bell and Howell perfected and standardized. The Kinedrome 35-millimeter motion picture projector, patented on August 6, 1907, contained the rotary framer, which assured accurate registration between frame openings, allowed rapid projection, and eliminated film stretching and puckering. Howell understood that projecting a small image on a large screen required machinery built with a minimum of tolerances. Once precise sprockets and gears were assembled, operation depended upon the uniformity of the film projected. Consequently, Howell next concentrated on a film perforator. His invention consisted of a glorified punching press that accommodated the slight variations of film slit to 35 millimeters by utilizing four pairs of pilot pins finely ground to exact size that would guide the film through the punching process.
Despite these impro vements the projected image continued to lack the illusion of reality, a problem that lay in the design of cameras. Howell solved it with the first Bell and Howell cinematograph 35-millimeter camera, introduced in 1909. Through the use of the same type of pilot pins employed in the perforator, he eliminated the static problems, caused by friction between the film and the sprockets and cams, of earlier designs. He also added a turret with four lenses, thereby enabling the operator to "fade in, " "fade out, " and "lap dissolve" by changing the angular aperture of the shutter. " The final step in providing mass-produced motion pictures was the development in 1911 of the automatic continuous printer for reproducing films. This was more than a mechanical accomplishment. Rapid film processing included an understanding of the chemistry of developing solutions, as well as the physics of light intensities, to account for the varying densities of the negatives. The greatest mechanical problem was the elimination of shrinkage. Howell equalized the differences between the positive and negative films through the design of a convex surface over which the films traveled as they were exposed. This complex printer was so efficient that only forty such machines were required to serve the entire motion picture industry.
Having established standardization in professional cinematography, Howell created the first relatively inexpensive automatic camera, introduced in 1922, for the amateur cinematographer; it used 17. 5-millimeter film at the exceptional speed of 128 frames per second. In 1922-1923, when Eastman Kodak brought out 16-millimeter cellulose acetate film, he redesigned the camera to accommodate this safer product. Howell's use of 17. 5-millimeter film exemplifies one of his notable design principles, the attempt to utilize existing equipment. Cutting 35-millimeter film in half was a practical procedure he also used with 16-millimeter film when he introduced, in about 1928, his 8-millimeter camera for amateur photographers.
He officially retired as chief engineer of Bell and Howell in 1938 but remained as an engineering consultant until his death, thirteen years later, in Chicago. Leaving administrative functions to others, he continued to work at his drafting board, eventually contributing 147 patents. He spent his retirement designing new products and improving existing ones, often working on weekends. He exemplified the nineteenth-century work ethic, deploring bureaucracy, extravagance, waste, and public ceremony while revealing an unassuming personal dignity and deep respect for craftsmanship, machines, efficiency, and individual initiative.
In 1929 he became an honorary life member of the American Society of Cinematographers.
Quotes from others about the person
Charles Percy observed that Howell "never designed a product without completely thinking through the tooling of the product and how it would be manufactured. "
Howell married Effie Viola Brown on June 14, 1906; they had three sons. On April 27, 1929, Howell married Nora L. Beveridge (nothing is known concerning the termination of his first marriage).