The Specto speed controller seems to be something to do with synchronising sound - what a fascinating find one of those would be. And now I do have one, thanks to Paul Schimmel. Here are the instructions. Also I have acquired an 8mm Specto wiv speed control fitted.

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Pics 1-4, 6 & 7 above are most of a Specto leaflet. It has 6 sides, but is folded in a way that the bottom quarter of each page is somewhat separate. On pages 2 to 4, the print is the same way up as the main part and is shown with it. On the other three, the printing is upside down relative to the main part of the page, and these sections are the first three parts of pic 8. The last part of Pic 8 is from a second, later version of the leaflet; I only have part of this. The only clue as to date is the little note "3/57", bottom left of pic 7. This is obviously later, with higher prices, so the earlier one is before March 1957 - probably.

For completeness, I had included the instructions for a Specto. The thumbnails are here, but all the full size pix disappeared in the Great Software Disaster of 2015, and I cannot face re-doing all 25, so I have left the thumbnails and added a pdf SPInstrs.pdf.

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And a leaflet for a Specto analyser with a very odd colour scheme. Then a group of 3 older versions. The RH one has the inching button which is part missing on the LH one. Centre one has no button at all. And what about that 3-pin socket two of them have? What does it do? (If anyone knows of a source for the plugs to fit such sockets I shall be eternally grateful.) And it's not much better at the back- The centre one has a shaft protruding which seems to have lost its knob, but it's in a quite different place to the other two. I would much appreciate a copy, to buy or borrow, or a scan or even a photocopy of various editions of the instructions for these machines.

I have since acquired a pair (greed!) of these obviously very late machines. Here are some pix.

I recently had a request from a friend for a working 8mm Specto. Always ready to help, I dusted one down. As usual, it gave me a bit of a fight. As well as a new main drive belt, oiling and new rubber feet to replace manky ones, one of the front adjustable feet was locked solid. It also threw a new trick at me. I was about to road test when I spotted that the claw was running the opposite way to the sprockets, so that when they (the sprockets) were operating normally, the claw was trying to push the film up instead of pulling it down. This had me floored for a while, but I finally figured out that, as the in-and-out and up-and-down cams were on two separate shafts, they must have got out of sync. Then it was a matter of loosening one and turning the other until it was right. It reminds me of another Specto, for another friend, which had the motor running backwards. That was a matter of swapping the leads to the brushes inside the motor.

Yet another friend expressed to me recently his disappointment with the light output from a 30v 100w Specto. Being a thoroughgoing sort of a guy, he looked up the original reviews and measured the light output from his machine. It was performing as per original; shows how much more light we like nowadays. The 8mm Specto above is a 240v 500w model, but I thought the light was still disappointing. Not helped by the fact that the 1" lens I first tried was so soft and fuzzy, with a big halo round the pic. I must get 'er indoors to type up what may have been my first ever venture into this writing-about-cine field, which was also about a Specto.