1938 · Photocell-Controlled Aperture · Work 810 of 1,871
A folding camera of 1938 standing open on a white wooden balustrade of a terrace in Rochester at noon, twenty-two centimetres high, a black grained leatherette body with broad bright chrome edges, the front flap swung down to form a tray from which a black bellows carries a lens board of matt aluminium with a round lens and shutter ring, on top an angular chrome housing with two small viewfinder windows, across its full width a small window of many tiny square glass cells catching the sun in points of light, a hand in a short white shirt sleeve on the release, hard sun from the upper right, garden foliage soft behind.
What it was used for
The Super Kodak Six-20 by Eastman Kodak appeared in 1938, a folding camera. Above the top half of the clamshell sits a selenium photocell mechanically coupled to the camera's controls: per the George Eastman Museum the photographer chose the shutter speed and the camera set the lens opening. The camera sold in 1938 for 225 dollars, which the museum gives as over 2,000 dollars today.
What was new
What was characteristic was not the cell - selenium-cell exposure meters already existed - but the mechanical coupling: the cell no longer showed a value for the photographer to transfer, it moved the aperture itself, with no electronics. The barb: per the George Eastman Museum only some 719 were built, and the museum records a reputation for unreliability - the self-timer could lock the shutter. Automatic exposure thus reached the market in a device costing 225 dollars that stayed in the hundreds of units.
What the sources leave open: The museum gives no sales figures as such; the 719 is a statement about units made ("some 719"). The Science Museum object page was not opened and is therefore not listed.