Donald J. Bell and Albert S. Howell founded Bell & Howell Incorporated with a capitalization of $5,000 in February 1907.
Bell and Howell Company entered the business of manufacturing, jobbing, leasing, and repairing machines. During its first year of business, over 50 percent of the new company's business involved repairing movie equipment made by other manufacturers.
What made the company famous, however, was its development of equipment that addressed the two most important problems plaguing the movie industry at the time: flickering and standardization. Flickering in the early movies was due to the effects of hand-cranked film, which made the speed erratic. Standardization was needed as divergences in film width during these years made it nearly impossible to show the same film in any two cities within the United States. By 1908, Bell and Howell refined the Kinodrome projector, the film perforator, and the camera and continuous printer, all for the 35mm film width. With the development of this complete system, and the company's refusal to either manufacture or service products of any other size than the 35mm width, Bell and Howell forced film standardization within the motion picture industry.