Introduction - Text
The French company Aaton, a manufacturer of cinema and audiovisual equipment, has a singular place in the world’s industrial landscape, having contributed numerous innovations to silver gelatin filmmaking, analogue video and digital technologies which have had a great impact on the history of history of techniques and practices. The goal of the present parcours is to offer an economic and micro-social analysis of this company’s operations through its organization, geography, principal customers and collaborations with cinema professionals (technicians, filmmakers, critics), and more generally with the technical industry (laboratories, institutions). Throughout its existence, from 1971 to 2013, the date it was purchased by the company Transvidéo, its cameras and sound recorders (Aaton 16 and 35 mm cameras, the Pénélope Delta camera, Cantar digital sound recorders) and some of its technological processes (time coding) illustrate how its research joined ergonomics and technicity, following on from the Éclair company and in response to its principal competitor, the Arnold & Richter company. We will also gauge the impact of these innovations on post-production and better grasp this company’s symbolic position in the world of cinema through the connections its founder and engineer, Jean-Pierre Beauviala, maintained with Cahiers du cinéma in particular.