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Watson Bulk Loader.
If you have never seen one, google. If you owned one - or one of the other fine bulk load machines - remember how sensible you thought you were going to be. Why, you'd be able to load all your own 35mm cassettes and the film would be cheap and you were going to make masterpiece images with every roll...An unlimited supply of film...
And now remember the reality:
a. Film in bulk rolls was cheaper than pre-loaded cassettes, but not that much cheaper when you consider that you were also forced to buy empty cassettes. The people who got into this in the 50's and 60's could get the old Kodak and Ilford cassettes that popped apart when you struck the spool on a hard surface ( and that's a separate tale...) but when the makers switched to one-use cassettes that had to be taken apart with a can opener, that frugal door was closed.
After that you purchased screw-apart plastic cassettes.
b. Screw apart plastic cassettes worked fine for a few times and then started to gather dust in the felt light trap.
c. This led to tramline scratches on the film, dust inclusions, and light leaks. Which you found out about only in the final wash water at development.
d. Bulk loaders needed to be loaded in a good, tight, darkroom.
e. Bulk loaders attracted static and dust.
f. Bulk loaders were never kept in a fridge or cool room. Thus the film in them cycled up and down in temperature with the rest of the house. And you got variable results depending on how long the film roll was in there. If you were loading colour film you could get some pretty startling chromatic art...of an inadvertent nature.
I had several loaders at different times, including some ex-NATO loading gear from aerial reconnaissance units. They worked, with all the setbacks detailed above. Eventually, the makers of the films stopped putting it out as bulk loads and the supplies dried up. Then digital came along and the digital bulk loaders took over...
