Bell and Howell is a U.S.-based services organization and former manufacturer of motion picture machinery, founded in 1907 by two projectionists, and was originally headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. The company is now headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, and currently provides services for automated equipment in enterprise-level companies.

According to its charter, the Bell & Howell Company was incorporated on February 17, 1907. It was duly recorded in the Cook County Record Book eight days later. The first meeting of stockholders took place in the office of Attorney W. G. Strong on February 19 at 10 a.m. The first board of directors was chosen for a term of one year: Donald Joseph Bell (1869–1934), chairman; Albert Summers Howell (1879–1951), secretary; and Marguerite V. Bell (wife of Donald Bell), vice chairman.^[1]

Historically, Bell & Howell Co. was an important supplier of many different media technologies. The firm built its name making such products as:

In 1934, Bell & Howell introduced their first amateur 8mm movie projector, in 1935 the Filmo Straight Eight camera, and in 1936 the Double-Run Filmo 8. The 1938 Kodak cassette holding 25 feet of Double-Eight film was taken by the Filmo Auto-8 in 1940.

In 1954, Bell & Howell purchased DeVry Industries' 16mm division.^[3]

Although known for manufacturing their film projectors, a partnership with Canon between 1961 and 1976 offered still cameras. Many of their 35mm SLR cameras were manufactured by Canon with the Bell & Howell logo or Bell & Howell/Canon in place of the Canon branding. The firm dropped the production of movie cameras by the end of the 1970s.

Bell & Howell was a supplier of media equipment for schools and offices. The film laboratory line is now a separate company, BHP Inc, which is a division of Research Technology International.

The firm added microfilm products in 1946. It purchased University Microfilms International in the 1980s. UMI produced a product called ProQuest. In the 2000s, Bell & Howell decided to focus on their information technology businesses. The imaging business was sold to Eastman Kodak and the international mail business was sold to Pitney Bowes. On June 6, 2001, Bell & Howell became a ProQuest Company,^[4] which was then a publicly traded company, but is now a subsidiary of the private Cambridge Information Group. In September 2001, the remaining industrial businesses, along with the Bell & Howell name were sold to private equity firm Glencoe Capital.

The company merged with the North American arm of Böwe Systec Inc. In 2003, Böwe Systec later acquired the entire company. It was known as Böwe Bell & Howell until 2011, when Versa Capital Management bought the company out of bankruptcy and renamed the company "Bell and Howell, LLC".^[5]

They also had an Electronics and Instrumentation Division on Lennox Road, Basingstoke, UK. This facility produced several different types of transducers for applications such as North Sea oil platforms and the Ariane Space vehicles.^[6]

Bell & Howell marketed a specially designed Apple II Plus computer to the educational market beginning in July 1979. The modified Apple had additional security elements for classroom use such as a tamper-proof cover. The case color was black but the inside was a standard Apple II Plus.^[7][8] The modified Apple II became known colloquially among computer enthusiasts as the "Darth Vader" Apple II due to its black case design.^[9]

Bell & Howell founded an Education Group within their company in 1907. This Education Group created Bell & Howell Schools in 1966. In that same year, the Education Group purchased a controlling share of DeVry Institute of Technology. Two years later in 1968, Bell & Howell’s Education Group, via a controlling interest in DeVry, acquired Ohio Institute of Technology in Columbus, Ohio.^[10] Over the years, the Education Group has bought and sold large interests in a variety of educational organizations and institutions.