Revere Camera Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Revere Camera Company was started in 1920 by Mr. Samuel Briskin, who also started Wollensak Recorders and Opticals.
Founded in 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, USA as the Excel Radiator Company by Ukrainian immigrant Samuel Briskin to manufacture car radiators, but started manufacturing some coarse household products later in the decade. They started making budget 8mm movie cameras in 1939 through a subsidiary run by Briskin's sons. That company was later merged into Excel Radiator Co. which then changed it's name to Revere Camera Co. The Revere name is taken from the Revere Copper Co. which provided financial backing for Excel during the depression. In the 50's the company was the second largest manufacturer of small movie cameras in the USA and in order to grow that business further the company took over their primary lens and shutter supplier in the form of the New Jersey based Wollensak Optical Co. both to secure their supply of parts but also to gain a more upmarket brand name, although Wollensak was primarily know as an OEM supplier of parts they has a small range of upmarket still cameras. The Revere brand name had become synonymous with budget cameras and soon after the take-over Wollensak models appeared that were mechanically mostly identical to the standard Revere models but had much better lenses, more stylish casing, and sold for a premium price. The company started manufacturing tape recorders in the early 1950's, that side of the business never became an important part of the company's output. Samuel Briskin was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in 1960 and rather than leave the company to his family he decided to sell the company to 3M for 17 million USD.1
