No. 3 Kodak

Format

factory-loaded roll film

System

Kodak Original

Shutter

sector, instantaneous, with rotating stops and adjustable speed

Focusing

rack and pinion

Metering

none

Spec Notes

THE FIRST OF THESE CAMERAS TO ABANDON THE CIRCLE - five dimensions from the No. 2: format becomes rectangular, the lens lengthens to 5-1/4 in, focusing becomes rack and pinion, the shutter gains adjustable speed, and the body grows. Two reflecting finders, horizontal and vertical. Capacity 100 rising to 250 by the 1894 catalogue. *** THE JUNIOR FOLDS, AND A MUSEUM RECORD THAT WOULD HAVE REVERSED IT SAYS THE OPPOSITE OF ITS CITATION. *** The Science Museum Group classes its No. 3 Kodak Junior as a 'magazine camera' with a 'detachable film magazine', which would have made film advance a second dimension. But 'magazine camera' is KODAK'S OWN TERM FOR THE RIVAL CLASS IT IS ATTACKING, printed in these very catalogues: 'a glass plate magazine camera measures over 500 cubic inches, weighs 9 pounds loaded for only 24 pictures.' And the detachable holder is line-wide, not a Junior feature - the 1892 catalogue shows 'the roll holder of 2 Kodak, removed from the Kodak'. The shorter body is ENTAILED by the narrower spool, one root cause and one dimension. THE JUNIOR IS NOT A CHEAPER MODEL: $40.00 = $40.00 in AA-13 and in four catalogue years, which defeats the natural assumption that 'Junior' means a stripped rung. NEGATIVE SIZE OMITTED - Kodak's own catalogues print four different rectangles across 1890, 1892, 1893 and 1894. 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. A DIMENSION IS DELIBERATELY ABSENT HERE. Kodak's catalogue scans corrupt vulgar fractions specifically: repeat reads of the same page return different fractions while prose, model names, shutter names, dollar figures and INTEGER measurements stay stable. Where Kodak's own years disagree with each other the value is omitted rather than picked. Integers are trusted - the 1890 volume gives cubic-inch figures reliably in the same sentence whose fraction reads as the impossible '2 3/2 inches in diameter'. 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

Bausch & Lomb Universal, 5-1/4 in focus, rotating plate with three apertures

Rangefinder

No

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1889