Last August, Michael Pritchard received an email from someone claiming to possess Charlie Chaplin’s movie camera. The owner wondered whether Christie’s auction house, where Pritchard has been the camera specialist for the past 20 years, would be interested in selling it.

Pritchard could not at first be sure that it was a serious offer. “Learn in this job to be sceptical,” Pritchard says, “because so often the claims do not stand up. But every once in a while, they do.”

This was one of those times: the camera on offer was a a Bell and Howell 2709, the archetypal Hollywood movie camera: hand-cranked with four lenses, a distinctive Mickey-Mouse-ears magazine and a wooden tripod.

The 2709 was a mainstay of film production during Hollywood’s silent era, but what made this particular camera so remarkable was that there was documentary evidence to prove that it had indeed been bought by Charlie Chaplin.

Now, almost 90 years later, the camera was on display at Christie’s and put up for sale. “The camera is very significant,” Pritchard says, “because it's very rare to have a camera with a recorded provenance back to the established director.”

The record lies in a yellowing copy of the original sales receipt, noting in scratchy handwriting the purchase of the camera on February 23, 1918 by Charles Chaplin, whose address is given simply as ‘Hollywood, California’.

Chaplin’s purchase came one month after he had set up his own film studio, and the camera was with him for the most creative part of his career, filming such landmark pictures as ‘The Kid’ (1921) and ‘The Gold Rush’ (1925).

But, with the arrival of sound in the 1920s, the Bell and Howell was retired; Chaplin passed it onto one of his employees, on whose death it was purchased by the current owner. The sale has chimed a renewed public and critical interest in Chaplin, 30 years after his death.

Last year, a bowler hat and cane used by Chaplin in his iconic role as the little tramp sold for £75,000 at Bonhams in Los Angeles. Next month, all 12 of the short films made by Chaplin for the Mutual film company between 1916 and 1917 will be screened at London's Cadogan Hall. The soundtrack will be performed live by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carl Davis.

“It is astonishing how Chaplin has leapt back into public affection,” says David Robinson, whose biography of Chaplin inspired Richard Attenborough's 1992 biopic.

“The fact people are still watching his films is a testimony to his ability to make films which remain good and watchable.” As well as directing, Chaplin also produced and even composed the musical score for his later films: in many ways, he was far ahead of his time.

“Every setup and frame is focusing on what he wants you to see,” Robinson says. “These were extraordinarily well-made films.” What made this even more extraordinary was that before The Great Dictator (1939), none of Chaplin’s films had a script; the director would simply talk with members of the crew about the next sequence before shooting it.

In later decades, Chaplin’s fame turned to notoriety, driven by his penchant for young girls and leftwing politics. Driven out of the United States in the 50s for allegedly un-American activities, Chaplin moved to Switzerland, where his son Michael is now planning to turn his father’s old home into a museum.

He intends to include artefacts from his father's career, as well as recreating the London of his father’s childhood through interactive exhibits. But Chaplin's plans are currently being delayed by a neighbour complaining that the museum might cost him his parking space.

The eldest of eight children Chaplin had with Oona O’Neill (whom Chaplin married aged 54, when she was 18), Michael Chaplin was not yet born when his father produced the films that would secure him screen immortality, but he did appear in two of his father’s later works.

At the age of five, he made a brief appearance in ‘Limelight’; a more significant role came when we was 10 in ‘A King in New York’. “I always felt that there were two people,” Chaplin says. “There was the real him and there was the little tramp, and the pair worked together to create these films. My father was complicated, difficult and demanding. He was a human being, not the magical creation that the tramp was.” 

That magic was captured and preserved by the Bell and Howell 2709 film camera, which, amazingly, is still in full working order. Its new owner will not only be purchasing a hugely significant piece of film history: they could also use it, just like Chaplin, to shoot their own silent films.