The Duplex Amateur Outfit was a short-lived, small-gauge camera-projector system which used 11.6mm (0.457 in) center-perforated cellulose diacetate film. As the name suggests, the system was created by Duplex Motion Picture Industries (initially known as the Duplex Machine Company) – a corporation which produced and sold film industry machinery in the first third of the twentieth century. Duplex founder Herbert Oswald Carleton, was an inventor and cinematographer born in Rochester, New York, to Swedish émigré parents, who, with the involvement of his brothers Charles, George and Walter, formed the company in the early 1900s. First housed in the basement of the Carleton’s home in Brooklyn, the company soon expanded to a manufacturing plant on 75th Street, Brooklyn, later moving to an even larger location in Long Island City. Presumably named after the their first innovation, a step printer which allowed two prints to be struck simultaneously, the Duplex Machine Company began producing a robust line of film industry equipment, including “automatic printers, polishing machines, perforating machines, splicing blocks, measuring machines, special grinders, tripods, cameras, automatic light change devices, rewinding and measuring sets, rewinders for reels, dummies for reels and negative rewinders” (Moving Picture World, 1914; Moving Picture World, 1915; Moving Picture World, 1923; Brooklyn Citizen, 1924).

As a natural addition to this comprehensive product line, Duplex soon commenced plans to market an amateur film package of equipment, consisting of a camera (the “Photoscope”) and a projector (the “Project-A-Graph”), both designed to be used with 11.6mm center-perforated diacetate film. Despite Charles H. Carleton’s assertion that the Duplex Amateur Outfit was available as early as 1915, advertisements released by the company (all existing examples of which, it should be noted, are directed at dealers, not consumers) point to a much later date for the system’s debut. On May 5, 1924, an issue of the promotional periodical Duplex Progress announced: “All the necessary tools, jigs and dies for the manufacture of the Project-A-Graph are well under way, in fact, most of them completed and quantity production in 5,000 lots will begin in the near future.” By the end of June, a definite date had been announced: “On and after November 1, 1924, we expect to be in a position to deliver Project-A-Graphs in any quantity desired, and furnish both equipment and pictures for the Christmas trade.” However, on November 1, the projector had still not been released, with the company’s relocation from Brooklyn to Long Island City being blamed for the delay. “Now that we are located in the present building,” the Duplex Progress reported, “the speed with which the parts will be made within the next few months will be truly amazing” (Anon., 1924; Carleton, 1955).

While the Photoscope and most of the other Duplex products were the invention of Herbert Carleton and his brothers, the Project-A-Graph was created by Gerald J. Badgley, a mechanic and sometime actor, who likely met Herbert through their mutual involvement with the Thanhouser Company in New Rochelle, New York. Encased in a shiny, globular metal shell, the Project-A-Graph was a visually striking piece of machinery, if somewhat mechanically conventional. Very little is known about the Photoscope camera, and marketing focused almost exclusively on the Project-A-Graph and an anticipated library of Duplex films, which aimed to cover “an immense variety of subjects”. The size of the projector’s reels, as well as surviving prints, indicate that up to 400-ft (121.92m) films were sold – but details regarding the cost of the outfit, its commercial availability, and the complete list of marketed film library titles remain elusive (Duplex Motion Picture Industries, 1924b; Badgley, 1924; Bowers, 1995).

Regardless of when the Duplex Amateur Outfit was initially made available and the details of its marketing strategy, the lifespan of the format was predictably short. While the design of the 11.6mm gauge shared more than a passing resemblance to Pathé’s 9.5mm Pathé-Baby, like many small-gauge formats of the early 1920s, it was the meteoric rise in popularity of Kodak’s game-changing 16mm format that likely contributed to the failure of the Duplex amateur system. In January 1926 the Project-A-Graph was not mentioned in an Exhibitor’s Trade Review article specifically covering the variety of Duplex equipment, and by March of the following year, The Film Daily was reporting on a new line of Duplex 16mm perforators, slitters, and printers. Although the Carleton Brothers and Gerald Badgley would continue to innovate motion picture equipment individually, Duplex Motion Picture Industries itself went out of business in 1932, embroiled in a lengthy patent infringement court battle with Gaumont (United States District Court, ED. New York, 1932). In the years since the format’s demise, the details of the Duplex Amateur Outfit have often been confused and mistaken, likely stemming from the company’s common name and a 1930 Movie Makers article which contained multiple inaccuracies (among them: misidentifying a photo of the Project-A-Graph and claiming Duplex film had “two round perforations on each side of the picture”). Because of this, care should be taken when researching the format (Bernstein, 1926; Film Daily, 1927; Film Daily, 1932; Crawford, 1930).