That Tim Guy

As I was rummaging around my parent’s basement I found an old dark leather case. I had no idea what was in this case. The clip was broken, the leather is dry, there was about 20 layers of dust on it, and a few cobwebs. I took a deep breath and blew off the dust and promptly coughed after inhaling the dust. I brought it over into the light and opened it up…it looked like there was another case inside of this one. This didn’t make any sense. Upon closer examination I found that there was one small label on it that said “KODAK.” I thought to myself….hrm…this is not the Kodak logo I am familiar with, but perhaps its an old camera?

Well, my guess was right. It took me a solid 15 minutes to figure out all of its workings and how to open it without breaking it, but it is a camera. “No. 1A Autographic KODAK JR.” The last patent date I saw on the inside of the film cover was 1917. From what I could tell, all of the mechanical operations of this camera still seemed to be functioning at about 100%. The lens looks a little bit cloudy and I think I can see an old fingerprint on it (I wonder who’s it could be? My Father’s? Grandfather’s?) It says it uses 116 film and after quick research, it doesn’t look like it has been produced in 25 years or so. From some of my other research…it appears that the “Autographic” feature of this camera was the precursor to the time stamp that we are accustomed to seeing on the lower right hand corner of photos. There was a door on the back of the camera. One would open this door and write the date, location, or anything else onto a red piece of paper with a stylus or pencil and then expose it to light for a few seconds and then close the door. This would then add the information to the film negatives in between the frames. Quite a handy way to keep track of what the photos are.

Other than this basic info, I don’t know a whole lot about it…prices of these cameras seem to range on eBay from $35-$100+

So I finally started to “customize” this.  I figured I’d add a few things and such. Nothing fancy, perhaps I’ll do more again later.