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16mm high speed camera with attached Dunmore motor

Major collection: Science & Technology
Named collection: Harold E. Edgerton Collection
Object type: camera
Maker: Eastman Kodak
Date made: date unknown
Nomenclature: photographic tools and equipment - high speed photographic equipment
Classification: tools and equipment

Plate on camera reads, "Kodak High Speed Camera, Made in Rochester, N.Y., USA., by Eastman Kodak Company, T.M. Reg. U.S. Pat. Off., Pat. U.S.A. 2,466,364, Serial No. 1737. Warning. This camera, constructed to operate at high speeds, may be dangerous if operated otherwise than in accordance with instructions furnished herewithin." Attached motor anufactured by the Dunmore Co., Racine, WI, Type KB, Model 6050-234, Serial No. 1074, 32 volts, 9 amps. Charlie Wyckoff interview, 08/06/1993: "This is the Eastman high-speed 16 mm camera. this is a continuous-motion film and it didn't have to be used with a strobe because there's a little prism that rotates in there that moves the image produced in synchronism with the motion of the film. . . [words garbled] The light through the lens goes through this thing and is displaced into synchronism with the film moving. So the action is basically stationary on the film until this thing gets so far that you can't see it any more so then it shuts off. It doesn't shut off, the light just can't get through. So then the film comes into position on the next rotation. "There was another company that made a similar camera called Fastax [check name] and they had a cubicle prism, theirs was a square, it was a cube. So it would go faster than this thing, but it wasn't as good, because it didn't track the image as well as this thing did. So in order to really make that any good at all, that had to be electronic flash, but this one didn't have to be. "I don't believe this thing [90.48.1] has a synchronizer in it anywhere. No, it doesn't. These switches in here are for a hundred feet of film or 50 feet of film and you don't want the motor to keep going after the end of the film comes because as it whips around it keeps tearing it off and finally you get all kinds of little flakes in here that will jam the camera. "I make [the date] more like 1940. I was using this thing -- I wasn't using this camera, but I had another guy associated with me, Henry Lester, that used this camera, along with the strobe that I was using, on one of these cameras, in 1942. So I know this camera was in existence then."


1990.048.001

Related People

thumbnail Edgerton, Harold Eugene
American
1903-1990; electrical engineer; professor
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Wyckoff, Charles Wales
USA
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