Eugen Bauer was born in 1879, and educated himself as a skilled mechanic. In 1905 when he was 26 years old, he established his own little repair shop for movie projectors and optical instruments. Only two years later in 1907 he built his first own movie projector, which had the totally unique feature, that it wound the film onto a take-up reel. Up until that point there were no take-up reels on projectors, and the film simply just ran down into a basket, and had to be manually rewound again. In 1928 his company and production facilities moved to Untertürkheim. The famous company Robert Bosch took over Bauer as early as 1932, and the production of movie projectors continued until after the war. Contrary to many other companies the Bauer/Bosch corporation was not destroyed during or after the war, and production began again in 1946, the same year as Eugen Bauer passed away, only 67 years old. In the 50's and 60's Bauer benefitted from the booming new market for 8mm home movie cameras, but from the 70's the crisis began to set in. More and more moviegoers stayed at home in front of their television sets, and the market for larger cinema equipment and projectors went drastically down. The market for amateur 8mm film also collapsed at the end of the 70's, and allthough Bauer and Bosch aqquired both Braun AG in Kronberg and Cine Nizo (Niezoldi & Kramer) in 1980 it was all too late. The factory in Stuttgart was finally sold off to Daimler-Benz in 1985 and this was the end for Bauer.

Bauer 88 B (1954 - 1960)
Serial no.: 2A2 - 3N1586
Format:  8 mm rollfilm (silent)
Optics: Schneider-Kreuznach  Xenoplan 1:1,9 / 13
Shutter:  4 speed integrated spring operated shutter + transport
Misc.: Electric eye match needle exposure control, coupled lightmeter (Gossen)

As mentioned in my biography, this 8mm movie camera are of great semtimental value to me. This beautiful Bauer 88 B belonged to my father until his death, and I didn't  have the heart to part with it. He bought it in 1959-60 just before I was born. I still have the endless rolls of film which this Bauer has documented, and the first reel dates from 1960. Once in a while I still watch these old movies on my Eumig projector, and it's quite amazing when you notice the poor light conditions under which the Schneider-Kreuznach lens still was capable of rendering sharp images. I always had a dream to try to shoot a cartoon with this camera because it is capable of shooting single frames, but I never got around to it. I don't really know that much about movie cameras, but I do know that this Bauer is a part of my childhood and my past, and besides that it is so wonderfully built that it is just pure pleasure to simply hold it in your hands from time to time and get that "german quality" feel...