Technical Apparatus
The Film Museum hosts a small collection of technical apparatus relating to film and cinema history. These machines and objects represent the processes of film capture (cameras), montage (editing tables and equipment), reproduction (printing machinery) and projection over several decades.The collection includes apparatus from the fields of amateur filmmaking as well as industrial film production: from the "Pathé Baby" 9,5mm home movie system (1920s) and wood-cased 35mm cameras from the early period of cinema, up to the Listo Optical Sound Camera which Peter Kubelka used in 1959 when creating the soundtrack for his masterpiece Arnulf Rainer.
The pre-cinematic era is also represented in the collection, including, for instance, historical flip-books, a Chromatoscope and Stereoscope (circa 1850) and several examples of the Magic Lantern in combination with a wide range of glass slides used during Magic Lantern performances.
Parts of the collection are currently exhibited in the Vienna Museum of Technology (Technisches Museum Wien): the museum's exhibition area medien.welten (media.worlds) includes several of the Film Museum's most valuable objects as a permanent loan.
