Just under the lens there is a small hole with a light trap door that leads to a brass tube running from the lens board to the film. The frame punch needle is inserted into this hole and run back to the film where it puts a small hole in the middle of the film. This marks the take the director wants printed. The dark rooms weren't really black dark because the film was black and white so there were "Ruby red lights" for the lab technicians to use to look for the punches and to see their work. The Sterling Camera and Film Company's four features in reverse order are:  "The Game of Three (1915), "The Land of the Lost" (1914), both written by Leon Wagner, who's name appears on this camera . "Over Niagara Falls" (1914) plus the historically most important, "Richard III" (1912), authored by Wm. Shakespeare,  Directed by James Keane, Starring Frederick Warde. Research shows that "Richard III" is the second feature film made and the earliest surviving complete feature.  Luke McKernan, one of the worlds leading silent historians and whom I consider an expert on Shakespeare in film said that "Richard III" generated a lot of interest a few years back when the sole print turned up, and it was acclaimed as the earliest surviving American feature film, but in truth, its length is its only virtue - it's a truly awful film." Watch the DVD and make your own judgment.  This camera is unbelievably unique and may be historically the most important camera on this web site. I can't positively prove that it shot Richard III as there are no existing stills from the production set, here are a couple of the reasons I feel so positive about this camera being the camera that shot the second American feature film. A finished feature of 5000 feet in length.  1) The movie was copyrighted and released by the "Sterling Camera and Film Company" in 1912. It was released under State Rights Releasing.  2) This camera was manufactured by the Sterling factory to take 300 foot long rolls of film. Thus the odd shape to the top of this camera. The only reason to modify a camera in this manner would be the necessity for longer rolls of film. Someone felt the need for feature length rolls of film.  Long hours of research and some positive deductive reasoning bring me to the conclusion that this is the camera of "Richard III".  Historically The Sterling Camera and Film Company was very important in that they saw the future and stepped into the light to make what was to be only the second feature film made. Features were a brand new type of film and were experimental filming at best. The consensus of opinion for the period was that an audience wouldn't sit through an hour of just one story. Remember, films of the day were topicals, actualities and comedies. Most were about fifteen minutes at the long end. There were 3615 movie titles registered in 1912. This should give one a good idea of how fast a movie was made. Usually a three or four day shooting schedule.  In 1912-13 the movie production gold rush was on. There was a rush to production of the new "feature story pictures". This feature trend started at almost at the same instant at all the early studios. The credit for the long film gold rush goes to France where "Queen Elizabeth" starring Sara Bernhardt was filmed. It was released in four reels. The American rights were purchased by Adolph Zucor. "Queen Elizabeth", having been a great success, Zucor, film pioneer and head of Paramount Studios for thirty years, talks of the new fire to get as many of these long films into production as possible. From his book, "The Public Is Never Wrong" he wrote, "I shoveled all the money I could find into the small blaze. I hired more directors and cameramen, and searched frantically for scripts. I knocked on the dressing room doors of stage stars, and , waving money as if I had a lot of it, begged them to come before the cameras".  The first three feature length films  are: 1.) May 20, 1912 Oliver Twist (5 reels) H. A. Spanuth 2.) Oct 15, 1912 Richard III (5 reels) Sterling Camera & Film Co. 3.) Oct 17, 1912 From the Manger to the Cross (6 reels) Kalem Co. In 1912, Frederick Warde, a respected actor on the legitimate stage, who, over the course of a long career, had worked opposite the likes of Edwin Booth, this time lends his talents to the still creatively fledgling medium of the motion pictures. Drawing upon his triumphant stage performance in the title role of William Shakespeare's Richard III, Warde and his fellow players gave the story a new interpretation, performing the classic tragedy of the deformed and unscrupulous king in pantomime for the then-silent cameras. Within a decade of its release, this early screen version of Richard III was believed to have been lost, with no prints surviving, but in 1996 a private film collector discovered a copy, which was then donated to the American Film Institute. The AFI archivally restored Richard III and commissioned a new orchestral score, written by Ennio Morricone. The film now has the distinction of being the oldest feature-length motion picture to survive intact and is historically invaluable both as an example of early cinema and as a look at acting and theatrical production techniques of the turn of the century. Mark Deming, All Movie Guide  In a November 1912 interview conducted just one month after the release of The Life and Death of King Richard III feature film, Frederick Warde, a veteran Shakespearean actor and star of the film, said, "Shakespeare's plays can, with little skillful handling, be made into very effective photoplays ... visualizing as never before pictures that have been left to the imagination." Eighty-four years later, this Richard III production--the first film to attempt a complete retelling of one of Shakespeare's works and the oldest American feature film known to exist--was donated to the American Film Institute archive, introducing another generation of viewers to this historic adaptation of one of Shakespeare's finest history plays.