What were they? What had they been used for? Had they been part of some toy used by my children? After puzzling over it for a few minutes, I think I discovered the answer...
My father had an 8 mm movie camera back in the 1950's. (At the time, home movie cameras used this smaller film format. I don't understand the technology, but movies at the time were filmed in 16 mm. Currently IMAX films are created on much larger film - 65 or 70 mm.) For a glimpse at what these old home movie cameras were like, here is a You Tube clip...
Here is another clip of a commercial for these new inventions!
It was amazing to see ourselves moving around in color on a screen for five minutes (the length of each home movie), not standing around in black and white photographs! (There was, however, no sound. That came later with video cameras.)
My father eventually shot a lot of these little home movies. Then he spliced them together together so that he wouldn't have to change the reel every 5 minutes. Wanting a more professional look, he decided to shoot some titles to splice into the home movies. There were no home computers with graphics programs at the time... I suppose one could have written a title on a page and photographed that... But my father wanted it to look really professional!... So he bought a set of plastic letters that could be rearranged to make movie titles! These thin plastic letters were what ...
The package of letters came with a few graphics, too...
It may be hard to imagine, but... that's the way it was!!
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