"C" Ordinary Kodak

Format

darkroom-loaded roll film, 24 exposures

System

Kodak Ordinary / Daylight

Shutter

special sector, string-cocked, slow-fast adjustment

Focusing

focusing lever and index, to 6 ft

Metering

none

Spec Notes

The top of the Ordinary line: focusing lever and index, adjustable shutter speed and two reflecting finders, where the A and B sizes have fixed universal focus. Natural wood. The 4 x 5 in negative is the safest figure in the whole slice - two integers, identical across five separate catalogue reads, no vulgar fraction to corrupt. THE GLASS PLATE MODEL IS A BACK, NOT A CAMERA, AND FOLDS INTO THIS ROW AT ZERO DIMENSIONS. Kodak heads the section 'Glass Plate Kodaks without roll holder for films' - defining the product by what has been TAKEN OUT - and sells the plate capability as a priced accessory under its own heading, 'GLASS PLATE ATTACHMENT', at $4.00 for the Ordinary style and $5.00 for the Daylight. A surviving Ordinary C carries both backs with the body and the roll-film back sharing serial 2029. The 'spring ground glass frame' is a FOCUSING SCREEN, excluded by name from the dimension list. AA-13 lists and prices these separately because AA-13 catalogues PRODUCTS KODAK SOLD, not CAMERAS KODAK BUILT. NO PRICE IS RECORDED ON THIS ROW. AA-13's 'ORIGINAL LIST PRICE' column is not a list price - established in slice 7 and sharpened in slice 8. In this era Kodak's own catalogues give the real figures anyway, and where they matter to a row-shape decision they are quoted in these notes instead of stored as data. DATES ARE MARKET DATES, NOT PRODUCTION. AA-13 heads its columns 'ON THE MARKET FROM / TO'. Where Kodak's own catalogues place a model outside AA-13's span the conflict is recorded on the row rather than resolved. DATING: NONE EXISTS, AND THAT IS A POSITIVE FINDING RATHER THAN A GAP. No serial-to-year mapping was ever published for any Kodak of this era and there is no date code; Kodak's own catalogues print no serial anywhere. AA-13 records only two ceilings - the highest known serial on The Kodak as 5192 and on the No. 1 as 15,559 - and gives no serial note at all for any other model. A serial here establishes only that a camera falls below a known ceiling. What DOES date these cameras is Kodak's own vocabulary and hardware sequence: the body address marking ('Eastman Co. Rochester' runs 1889-1892) and the shutter succession, sector 1890 to Barker 1892 to Bausch & Lomb iris diaphragm 1893.

Fitted Lens

single lens with revolving stops, 7 in focus, rotating plate with three apertures

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

4 x 5 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1891