9.5 mm film

It was conceived initially as an inexpensive format to provide copies of commercially made films to home users, although a simple camera was released shortly afterwards.

Pathéscope produced a large number of home versions of significant films, including Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop cartoons, classic features such as Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, and comedies by such well-known stars as Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin.

A notable element in the Pathéscope catalogue was pre-war German mountain films by such directors as G. W. Pabst and Leni Riefenstahl.

Classics such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Dupont's Vaudeville attracted many film collectors.

Film for home cinematography was usually supplied in rolls approximately 30 feet (9 m) long and enclosed in a "charger" or magazine, but spool loading (50 ft/15 m or 100 ft/30 m) was also available.

The new company produced a well-made 9.5 mm Prince camera made in England by Smiths Industries and a low-powered Princess projector, but the gauge was already doomed as a popular format, and in 1960 the firm went into liquidation.

Nevertheless, the gauge has been kept alive by a dedicated group of enthusiasts who have used methods such as re-perforating 16 mm film to provide continued supplies of material.

Much damage was caused to 9.5 mm prints by early cheap toy projectors which lacked the customary sprocket drive requiring the pull-down claw to do all the work of transporting the film.