GENEVA, SWITZERLAND.- The Swiss-made Bolex movie camera is the subject of an exhibition at the town’s history museum. Marlène Dietrich had one. So did the Aga Khan, Andy Warhol, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Mahatma Gandhi. The Bolex camera was a sought-after item in the 1930s . And like many of the films it recorded, it went on to achieve legendary status. Today the Bolex H 16 is still being produced in a factory at Yverdon in canton Vaud. The 16mm camera has outsold all its competitors. The camera’s history goes back a long way, to an early 19th century workshop at Sainte-Croix in the Jura region of Switzerland. It was there that Möise Paillard began a watch-making business that later diversified into the manufacture of music boxes, gramophones and Hermes portable typewriters. But in the 1930s, Paillard zoomed in on a sector which like watch-making went on to become a byword for Swiss precision. A member of the family came into contact with Jacques Bogopolsky, a Ukrainian who had started a business making movie cameras in Geneva. The Paillard company took over the business, and appointed Bolsky – who by then had shortened his name – as engineering consultant to the newly-created Ciné-Bolex. Paillard-Bolex underwent a massive expansion, and by the 1960s employed nearly 6,000 people in Yverdon and Sainte-Croix. It became the biggest industrial employer in French-speaking Switzerland. Many of the original Bolex cameras from 70 years ago are still in use all over the world.