Title: | Total Tractor Concept |
Date: | 1968 |
Material: | Acetate film, plastic shell, metal hardware |
Dimensions: | Film 16 mm, tape ¼ in., cartridge 6½ × 4 × 1⅝ in. (16.5 × 10.2 × 4.1 cm) |
Company: | La Belle Industries, Inc. |
Location: | Oconomowoc, Wisconson, United States |
A film strip on a 16 mm film loop synchronized with a built in audio cartridge. The strip is a series of still frames that functions like a slide show. The audio tape is simply a Lear Jet Stereo 8 cartridge glued to the bottom of the film container. (Auto Mate 8 cartridges were also used [Teoli 2024]). Only two tracks are used on the tape: one contains the audio and the other the tone that advances the film to the next frame. The film container holds the loose loop of film and a mirror at a 45° angle, which reflects the frame into the projector optics.
The projector here is the La Belle Duo 16, which shows the images on a self-contained screen. Other models, like the Tutor 16, projected onto a wall. There is a receptacle to plug in a wired remote control (missing in this example). La Belle projectors were portable and were commonly used by salesmen on the road or in stores at point-of-sale. In this example, both the cartridge and the projector have been branded by Agri-Max Marketing Ltd.
La Belle Industries sold audio/visual equipment. One of their brochures describes the company as "Original manufacturers of synchronized slide/sound equipment for training, selling, promotion, public relations, and production guidance" (Weis 2024). The synchronization of film and audio seems to have been a specialty.