Shown here is an 819 cine dating from 1937.From eBay for under 10$. Art Deco at its very best. This is really a 650 cine version but it was numbered out of sequence in the 8 range because of it's direct reading capability.
Let's look at some of the films of yesteryear from the back of the meter.
Panchromatic or pan as it was often shortened to, was a black and white film - the word panchromatic meaning sensitive to all colours. Some older films were called ortho - these were not sensitive to red and resulted in the very glamourous almost black lips of early silent movie stars. FG is fine grain - a very relative term indeed compared to todays films.
EK is the familiar Eastman Kodak black and white pan films and Kodachrome in both daylight and (A)rtificial (tungsten) light forms.
The curious work Safety refers to the fact that early films uses a very flammable nitrate base.
