ABSTRACT
The French company Pathé Frères was the foremost producer of colored films in the first decade of the 1900s. The Pathé Frères’ stencil-cutting apparatus, which dates to circa 1909, was installed on a worktable measuring approximately 24 x 36 inches (c. 60 cm x 90 cm). The apparatus combines two separate innovative patents, the first for the stencil-tracing stylus, which was developed by the technician Jean-Antonin Méry and licensed by Pathé (French patent 373,502, filed January 14, 1907 and awarded March 19, 1907), and the second for the electromagnet slicer in the middle of the device, which was patented by Pathé in 1909 (patent 414,341, filed June 16, 1909 and awarded June 17, 1910).
