No. 1A Special Kodak

Format

116 roll film

System

Kodak Special

Shutter

Compound

Focusing

rack and pinion

Metering

none

Spec Notes

*** THIS ROW EXISTS BUT ITS SUPPOSED PREDECESSOR DOES NOT, AND THAT IS THE ADVERSARIAL FINDING OF THE SLICE. *** The research brief made this the middle of a THREE-row sequence for the 116 size: a 'No. 1A Folding Pocket Kodak Special' of 1908-12, then this camera, then the Six-Three. THE FIRST OF THOSE IS A PURE RENAME AND HAS BEEN DELETED. Kodak printed the SAME THREE PRICES for it in every year - $15.00 / $40.50 / $46.30 in 1909, 1910 and 1911 - and in 1912 the heading simply changes to 'No. 1A Folding Pocket Kodak - R. R. Type' with an IDENTICAL spec block, an IDENTICAL ladder and the word 'Special' gone from the page. That camera is already in this catalogue as No. 1A Folding Pocket Kodak - RR Type, whose row now carries the earlier name. THIS camera is genuinely new in 1912: THIRTY OUNCES against the R.R. Type's TWENTY-THREE, a rack-and-pinion bed, a rising front and its own page at $50.00. The weights are integers from Kodak's own spec blocks, which is why they are trusted. So the split from its predecessor is FOCUSING MECHANISM plus BODY, and NOT lens or shutter - both of those were already rungs on the R.R. Type's own ladder ('it will accommodate anastigmat lenses when desired', 1910 and 1911) and earn nothing. AN OPTION LADDER IS NOT A DIMENSION. This build has now ruled so four times, and in this slice that rule DELETED A ROW - see the No. 3 Folding Pocket Kodak's de Luxe note. SOURCE-HANDLING: the WebFetch relay fabricates when led, proven five times in this build. Every reading behind this row was taken with neutral questions, an explicit 'or say not stated' escape hatch, control questions whose answer had to be NO, and a second ask in different wording. One relay bleed WAS caught in this slice - asked about the 1913 Six-Three page it returned 'rack and pinion' and 'rising and sliding fronts', both of which are printed on the SPECIAL pages two pages earlier. That read was discarded and the isolated re-read returned the correct answer. Values resting on VULGAR FRACTIONS are unreliable: these scans return different fractions on repeat reads of the same page. Every row-shape call in this slice was decided on prose, on a model name, on a shutter name, on a SPEED COUNT, on an integer or on a dollar figure. Where a catalogue fraction and a museum specimen disagree the specimen is preferred and the conflict is recorded. NO PRICE IS RECORDED. Where a figure decides a row shape it is quoted in these notes instead. DATES ARE MARKET DATES, NOT PRODUCTION - AA-13 heads its columns 'ON THE MARKET FROM / TO'. Where Kodak's own catalogue shelf contradicts AA-13 the conflict is recorded on the row and NOT resolved. DATING: NO SCHEME EXISTS. No serial-to-year mapping and no date code was ever published for any Kodak of this era. Specimen serials are recorded for provenance only and are NOT decodable - and note they are not even a consistent KIND of number: the four published Series III figures mix a camera body serial (No. 3 Series III, 20021), lens serials (No. 1 Series III, 9080; No. 3 Series III, 104717) and an autographic-back serial (13327). Four numbers across two models spanning three orders of magnitude. DO NOT BUILD A DECODER.

Fitted Lens

Zeiss Kodak Anastigmat f/6.3, 5 in focus, standard; Cooke Series IIIa and B. & L. Zeiss Tessar Series IIb also offered

Rangefinder

No

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1912