Eric Max Berndt was born in Berlin, Germany, on October 31, 1903. In 1922, having already developed various film technologies for Siemens, the precociously talented Berndt emigrated to the United States where he swiftly found employment in New York City as a camera repairman, while designing film printers for the Kislyn Color Corp. Eventually he began overseeing the technical aspects of production for the Duplex Motion Picture Company based in Delaware.

In 1932, he formed the Eric M. Berndt Company to produce the Berndt-Maurer 16mm sound-on-film camera, which was widely used in the newsreel industry. With his partner John Maurer, he next founded the Berndt-Mauer Corporation in 1935, which manufactured innovative sound cameras and other film equipment. 

Berndt moved to the west coast of North America in 1939, subsequently forming the Berndt-Bach Company with Walter Bach. The company began manufacturing the Auricon 16mm camera for use in the emerging television industry. Berndt resigned from the company in 1960 and began developing “a sub-miniaturized motion-picture camera using 3mm film”, which was, according to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), “used in a special cockpit photography application by the United States Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base.” (Ryan, 1973)

In marketing materials for Berndt’s camera, perforator, printer, and projector package, he described the Cine-System 3 as “the miniaturization of ALL the component parts necessary for a completely integrated electronic and sound-on-film system utilizing a film width of 0.125 mils. (approximating 3mm)”, including “machines to cut and perforate the 3mm film from standard emulsions; a cine-camera weighing (with motor) approximately 12 ozs”, “a daylight processing tank” and “an optical printer for the transfer of the image to 16mm film for projection on any standard 16mm projector.” (Berndt Collection)

Every foot of Cine-System 3 film contained 120 frames. Berndt took 16mm, unperforated film and sliced it so that a 100-ft roll of 16mm film yielded 500 ft of 3mm film.  The Cine-System 3 camera ran three times slower than a 16mm camera, so when a 100-ft roll of 16mm film was converted to 3mm stock, it could be used to film the same amount of footage as 1,500 ft of 16mm film – the system’s economy of film stock use was part of Berndt’s pitch for his latest invention. (Berndt, 1972)  

Once the 3mm system was prototyped, Berndt sought potential customers who might be drawn to his “proven and dependable means for recording a synchronous electronic audio-visual image in places and on projects where size and weight are a critical factor, and where the need to study and evaluate is a post-operative necessity.” Berndt also touted its versatility: with a lens swap it could produce telephoto or wide-angle images, and it only required a 12-volt battery to power it.

Berndt claimed to have fielded numerous calls from agencies in Washington DC about potential uses for his system, including for a “top secret” application that concealed a 3mm camera in eyeglasses or a cigarette lighter.  Berndt had another serious inquiry about his system from a bank for surveillance purposes, a use which proved unviable due to its low resolution (Berndt, 1972). Berndt believed that his system could best be used for cost-effective information storage and retrieval, especially in confined spaces, which is why it seemed to have potential for NASA.

At some point Berndt gave up on the system, whose prototype now resides in the University of Southern California’s Moving Image Archive. Berndt died in 1975 at age 72.