1949 Cole Bros. Circus #144

For those of you who are AV equipment-minded, here is a photo of one of the Blog’s 16mm sound projectors, all threaded up and ready to show CIRCUS DAY IN OUR TOWN. This is an RCA Model PG-201, which was originally produced for the U.S. Army during World War II. These projectors are built like tanks and weigh a ton. The speaker, which weighs almost as much, is housed in a second case. After the war ended, RCA sold its remaining inventory of these machines to schools, libraries and other institutions that showed films. The church that sponsored my Boy Scout troop still had one just like this in the late 1950s-early 1960s, and it was the first 16mm sound projector I ever got to operate.