11.

COLOURFUL PLASTIC TOYS WITH OLD ANCESTORS

 Pop camera from 1997.

It came as a bonus in a package of confectionery from by Pingvin

    Lakrids, Denmark.

  PINGO was a fictional character  from the animated comedy         children TV series Pingu.

100 years earlier

a skilled designer Frank Brownell was asked by Eastman Kodak to design "The cheapest camera in the world" 1$. It had to be so simple, that a child could use it. 
As seen on this old bookmark scrap he succeeded. 

It got the name BROWNIE from a comic strip character. He was as well-known all over the world as 50 years later Disney's Donald Duck & Co.

     "Candid Camera" was a TV series that had nothing to do with the picture above though.    

       To be quite candid I doubt that this Candy Camera would tempt young children in these days.

Launched in 1959 was an adult-figured toy fashion-doll. It was called Barbie. 

Enormously popular by young girls it inspired the producers to an immense number of accessories. 

Among the vast number of Barbie branded goods of all sorts was this real 35 mm camera.

    

In 1966 GAF New Jersey US bought the View-Master factory. They initiated a cheaper mass-production and sold it as a toy mostly for fairy-tales and animated characters.

The book about Heidi was written by Johanna Spyri in 1880. It got popular on film (with Shirley Temple) already 1937. Dozens of TV productions were made and continued into the new century.





GAF in Belgium even made a simple plastic projector in the late 1960's. Though this grey model looked confidence-inspiring, it was just a cheap toy that lacked the joy of 3D-experience. The projected pictures became simply two- dimensional pictures of dubious quality.

Far better was this toy Episcope from Markes & Co, Germany about 1960. It displayed opaque materials by powerful lamp lighting on the object from above. Mirror and lens projected the images of book pages, printed photographs, etc. In the early 1900's, similar devices were used in lecture halls at high schools and universities as predecessors to video projectors.

  

Four sequentially operated lenses for fun filled shots. They were cheap novelty toys then. Their designs often had a tempting appeal.

It reminds me of the first patented experimental moviecamera by Louis Le Prince in Leeds UK 1888. But that far too complicated machine contained not less than 16 lenses.

Cheap plastic optical toy called Zoetrope can still be seen as an educational souvenir from a museum-shop. The printed paper strip with animated images is mounted into the drum. While turning it around the slots are acting as shutters . Looking through one of the slots the images appears to be moving. 

This was a novel invention by W G Horner in UK 1833.

Another forerunner to movies became a toy from mid 1950. I have got the gramophone record, but just a picture of the faceted mirror. It would have been attached to the top of the gramophone spindle and reflected animated living pictures while playing the music. 

Originally that kind of "Magic Mirror" was called Praxinoscope and invented 1877 by C E Renaud in France.

A camera that speaks for itself.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles talking camera ca 1990. It talks two seconds before the picture is taken.   The sentence coming out from the camera has been translated to me by the younger generation: 

"COWABUNGA! (= It’s an actor’s dream) SMILE!” 

The Turtle character originated from songs, comic books and TV programs and  since at least 1947.

10.

In a dark corner of my cellar I found this old music box

I have not looked inside it for decades. So my curiosity was great. How old is it and does it still work?

The spring motor, regulator and pick-up transportation was all right. Only the needles were gone.

Taking a closer look at the maker's plates ought to show a bit of the origin and age. 

All those patent dates do give quite a bit of interesting information.

  

The origin was a brainchild of Thomas A Edison’s in 1877. But the vast improvements in Charles Tainter and Chichester Bell’s patents from 1886 to 1897 were most important. Together these three gentlemen founded the North American Phonograph Co. Edison kept to his original idea of the phonograph as a dictating machine.  The subsidiary Columbia Co however got the rights to market it as a music machine with lots of entertaining cylinders.

   

An uncle of my fathers who owned this Graphophone managed to engrave a few songs on some of the wax cylinders in the 1920’s. Many years ago I took those short sound recordings to our National Library where they preserved them electronically. 

The brittle brown or black wax cylinders played for 2 minutes on this machine and were more or less worn out over time.

Edison’s last attempt to compete with Emile Berliner's Gramophone was the Blue Amberol as late as 1912. They were “indestructible” celluloid cylinders with twice the playing time. A new type of machine was introduced to fit the slower feeding of the pickup. The increasing development in high quality sound made the Amberolas popular for yet another decade.  

Already in 1901 the inventor of Gramophone records Emile Berliner had this huge hit with a recording of President McKinley's last public speech at the opening of the Buffalo Exposition September 6th 1901, the same day he was assassinated.

Several gramophone companies competed in the beginning of the century. Victor was one of them. This 7 inches copy of the record seems to be from 1904.

So in the long run the market for Phonograph Cylinders decreased. The flat gramophone records were easier to produce, store and handle. They became the future of acoustic sound recording. 

09.

SOME OLD 3D-VIEWERS 

The VIEW-MASTER was a novelty to me in the early 1950’s.

  

An aunt of mine brought this one as she returned from USA. It was souvenirs from places she had visited, like New York, Niagara Falls, California and Hawaii.

I bought this one with a built in source of light. Fed up by pictures like common view cards, I searched for other items. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II 1953 was one of them. One of the film stars I admired was Grace Kelly. My pictures of her wedding with prince Rainier of Monaco 1956 had more human presence in my view.

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.

I still remember the joy of my grandfather's  viewer called stereoscope in those days.

Oliver Wendell Holmes in US started making this stereoscope version. It was the most common type from 1881 to the 1930’s. He based it on an early patent by Sir Charles Wheatstone 1838.

                                               

This picture dated 1901 was made by Underwood & Underwood, the greatest publisher of stereo-graphic pictures. They claimed to deliver 25.000 of them a day in that period.

The first stereo cameras were in fact invented in the middle of the 19’th century. So the awakening interest in 3D pictures during the 1950's had its origin one hundred years ago. 

David Brewster’s viewer from 1849 was a bit more complicated. For non-transparent pictures a mirror lid was adjusted to reflect light onto them. The opaque glass at the back of the viewer let light to pass through glass or tissue paper photos. 

Arc de Triomphe in Paris France.

By adjusting the mirror on the lid to direct light on to the semi- transparent photo, you could experience the monument as seen in broad daylight.

By closing the top lid and use back-light on to the rear side with 

the opaque glass, the result got quite different. It became a very skillful colored night-view. Tiny pinholes represented the illumination sources.

This photo of Arc de Triomphe in Paris seems to be taken in the middle Ages, at least before 1900.

PARIS IN THE 1920'S

This elegant pocket size souvenir was a foldable viewer of high quality. 

Made in France by Unis folding Stereoscopes about 1925. The 3D slides are thin b/w films. 

Sawyers View Masters got a few competitors. Among them RO Mo Vick  and Standard  Click, both from France. In USA Sawyers got a rival called Tru - Vue, that had no success.

It was already in the New York Fair 1939 that Sawyers Portland , Origon US introduced the very first View-Master with proper Kodachrome pictures. Their success lasted for three decades.

08.

35 MM FILM

Leica was the first practical camera that used 1.5 m lengths of standard 35 mm Cine Film. By horizontal transport the frame size got 24×36 mm. That became a very popular format throughout the century.

A Leica? No, just an old Zorki S. It’s a Leica II clone made in Krasnogorsk Mechanical Factory Leningrad USSR as late as 1957. Like the Leica camera it had a coupled range-finder and film change was through the bottom plate. The lens is an Industar-22 f3.5 / 50mm (a copy of the Leitz Elmar).

I joined the Photo Club at high school in 1954, same year as the very first Agfa Silette came on the market. In order to afford this marvel I took a job in the summer holidays. 36 pictures on one roll of film! It had “everything” but automatic devices.

Very educational !

The amount of extra equipment grew pretty soon:

A. The lens hood was mounted at the end of the lens to block the sun or other light source in order to prevent glare and flare.

B. Blue and ultraviolet light in skies often resulted in pictures with a totally white sky on black and white film. A yellow filter gave a nice contrast to the clouds.

C. The macro lens was useful for close-up shots of small objects. Focusing was available by following a manual.

D. The camera had a synchronizer contact for a flash light when the shutter opened. The bulbs were disposable, used only once and then discarded. But indoors with a film speed of 40 ASA no other method was available then. 

E. My cheap light meter contained a graduated blue filter supposed to be turned until the incoming light was no longer visible. Then the scale could be read. That kind of subjective interpretation often failed.

But from a dear friend I got this wonderful beauty

.

GOSSEN SIXTOMAT was made in Erlangen Germany mid 1950’s. This light meter was based on the photoelectric properties of Selenium, so no batteries were needed. It worked perfectly for two decades.

BLACK AND WHITE

  35 mm film needed a proper enlarger. I took care of this PRAXIDOX as a dear memory of my high school photo club. It was made in the early 1930’s by Kamera Werkstätten Dresden Germany. Equipped with a double condenser and a Meyer Görliz Primotar 1:3.5 lens it was the best pre-war enlarger available to us in the 1950’s.

 Why did we young amateurs take that great pain making black and white pictures? 

Well, to tamper with the photos to our own taste in a dark room was simply great fun!

COLOR

KODACOLOR was available. Color paper prints 10x15 cm were developed in professional labs. They were expensive and seldom came out to our expectations. The colors soon bleached and the prints faded out.

But

KODACHROME color reversal film was the first successful color material, used for both cinematography and still photography slides. It was the most archival color film for many decades. We were impressed by the outstanding quality.

By extensive marketing the Eastman Kodak Company popularized the use of 35mm film. It brought photography to the mainstream and kept the products going through the entire 20'Th century. KODAK was the most well-known trademark in the world.

But where to get a projector?

Our school had invested in an expensive 35 mm projector called Unoscop that seemed to be standard in Scandinavia in the 1950’s. For us amateurs there was a cheaper cute little models called 351. Made by Fritz Weist & Co Stockholm Sweden, it worked well and had a magnificent lens: Voigtländer Dynar 1:2.5 / 80

A simple portable tripod with white projection screen from Projecta Holland.

So projected color slides from 35 mm film for home entertainment was new to us.

 We became very enthusiastic and thought it looked "almost like in the Cinema".

07.

WHAT WAS A KINETOSCOPE?

I took these analogue pictures some years ago. My torso of a cinema projector puzzled me very much. 

In some old book I remembered having seen something similar, but when and where…?

His film projector " The Exhibition Model" became Edison's first proper attempt on that market about 1900. 

It seems to have been about five years after his competitors (like Lumiere's) first successful cinema shows.   

KINETOSCOPE

Edison’s Kinetoscope was simply a peephole viewer showing half a minute of "living pictures" for a dime. 

It had been made in large numbers and was still very profitable in arcades and market places since 1894.

                        Up here seemed to be some space for a missing part. What could that be, I wondered?

AND HERE IT IS:

Yes! I have found this drawing now! It shows a second projection lens designed for an additional smart gadget. Just by moving the lamp house to the left, there is a slide holder for sciopticon*) stills on 8 x 8 cm glass plates. So maybe the projectionist could show slides while inserting the next reel of film. A good idea at the time?

*) Magic lantern

ABOUT FILM FORMAT

Of all the patents concerning Edison’s claim on the art of producing movies, the film format became the most important. 35 mm film perforated exactly like the Kinetoscope film became a standard all over the world for cinemas and still photography for the entire twentieth century. During WWII it seemed to be used for a primitive experimental “phonographic recorder” called Recordograph too.