The Revere Camera Company was started in 1920 by Samuel Briskin, who also started
Wollensak
Wollensak Optical was an American manufacturer of audio-visual products located in Rochester, New York. At the height of their popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, many brands of movie cameras came with a Wollensak Velostigmat lens. Wollensak reel ...
Recorders and Opticals.
History
Founded in 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, as the Excel Auto Radiator Company by Ukrainian immigrant Samuel Briskin to manufacture car radiators, but started manufacturing some coarse household products later in the decade.
Built for Excel – and designed by
Alfred S. Alschuler,
the manufacturing facility was located at 320 E. 21st St.,
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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.
They started making budget
8 mm movie cameras in 1939 through a subsidiary run by Briskin's sons, such as the ''Revere 88 Movie Camera'' and the ''Revere 85'' 8mm Projector. That company was later merged into Excel Auto Radiator Co., which then changed its name to Revere Camera Co. The Revere name is taken from the
Revere Copper Company
The Revere Copper Company is a copper rolling mill in the United States. It operated North America's first copper rolling mill. It was started by Paul Revere in 1801 in Canton, Massachusetts, and developed a commercially viable process for manufa ...
,
which provided financial backing for Excel during the depression.
In November 1952, Revere purchased the nearby Atwell Building – also designed by
Alfred S. Alschuler – at 221 E. Cullerton St.,
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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– and operated machinery on four of the building's eight floors.
In the 1950s, the company was the second largest manufacturer of small movie cameras in the United States. In order to grow that business further the company took over their primary lens and shutter supplier, New Jersey-based Wollensak Optical Co. The Revere brand name had become synonymous with budget cameras; soon after the take-over Wollensak models appeared that were mechanically almost-identical to the standard Revere models but had better lenses, more stylish casing, and sold for a premium price.
Revere started manufacturing tape recorders in the early 1950s. That side of the business never became an important part of the company's output.
Revere, starting probably in the 1950s, produced a rotary grinding hand tool similar to the
Dremel Moto-tool. The Revere-O-Matic was a 0.55 ampere model that operated at 15,000 r.p.m. (Model No. RG-1). The tools that attached to its
collet
A collet is a segmented sleeve, band or ''collar''. One of the two radial surfaces of a collet is usually tapered (i.e a truncated cone) and the other is cylindrical. The term ''collet'' commonly refers to a type of chuck that uses collets t ...
are compatible with the Dremel tool. The standard product included a table mount and a system for duplicating objects, adaptable to the Dremel without modification.
Samuel Briskin was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in 1960 and sold the company to
3M for $17 million (equivalent to $ million in ).
Cameras and projectors
Revere made 8mm (Revere 85) and 16mm movie projectors and cameras (Revere 44/88), as well as a 16mm sound Projector (S-16).
References
External links
Revere Camera Companyat Made in Chicago Museum
Defunct manufacturing companies based in Illinois
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