I quote the following from one of my photo books:
500 Cameras: 170 Years of Photographic Innovation, by Todd Gustavson, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc, 2011, page 224.
"Around 1913, Barnack, by then an employee in charge of the experimental department of the microscope maker Ernst Leitz Optical Works in Wetzlar, designed and hand-built several prototypes of a small precision camera that produced 24 x 36-mm images on leftover ends of 35mm motion picture film. Three of these prototypes survive."
"Barnack used one of his cameras in 1914 to take reportage-type pictures of a local flood and of the mobilization for World War I. That same year, his boss, Ernst Leitz II, used one on a trip to the United States. However, no further development of the small camera took place until 1924, when Leitz decided to make a pilot run of twenty-five cameras, serial numbered 101 through 125. Still referred to as the Barnack camera, these prototypes were loaned to Leitz managers, distributors, and professional photographers for field testing. The evaluations were not enthusiastic, as the testers thought the format too small and the controls too fiddly, which they were. ... In spite of its reviews, Leitz authorized the camera's production, basing his decision largely on a desire to keep his workers employed during the post-World War economic depression."
This early production run of the so-called "0 Series" [or "null" series] preceded the improved Leica I Model A of 1925.
Gustavson highlights the beginning of the 35-mm format thusly: "The genesis of 35mm photography can be traced to George Eastman's Kodak camera, the first to use nitrocellulose roll film. In July 1891, W.K.L. Dickson, an employee of Thomas Edison's New Jersey laboratory, visited Eastman's Rochester manufactory and ordered four fifty-foot lengths of 1-inch wide film, a size half the width and twice the length of that used in Eastman's No. 1 Kodak. Rectangular perforations were made on each edge of the film, four per 1-3/4 inch image frame, matching those used on Edison's Kinetograph, to evenly advance the film. These dimensions became the standard for 35mm film"
The book also describes two early commercially-available cameras -- the 1914 Simplex camera as "one of the earliest" to use the 35mm film format, and a 1914 Tourist Multiple model, "one of the first still cameras designed to use 35mm film."
Although Leitz wasn't the first to offer a 35mm camera to the public, Barnack has been called the "Father of 35mm Photography," and the camera at auction -- Serial No. 105, stamped with Barnack's name -- holds a special place in the history of photography.
- Craig
Last edited by c.a.m; 06-12-2022 at 11:54 AM.
Reason: correction