No. 4 Cartridge Kodak

Format

104 roll film; a glass plate adapter is an ACCESSORY, not a variant

System

Kodak Cartridge

Shutter

Eastman pneumatic release with iris diaphragm stops; the Eastman Triple Action Pneumatic Shutter by 1900

Focusing

"It has an index for focusing" - a scale. "When used with plates may be focused on the ground glass if desired"

Metering

none

Spec Notes

THE WOOD-FRONT GENERATION. Kodak, 1898: 'When open for use it exposes to view a bed and front board of highly polished mahogany with buffed brass fittings set off in brilliant contrast by the highly polished nickeled shutter.' The 1900 catalogue still prints it. *** THIS ROW SPLITS FROM ITS IMPROVED SUCCESSOR ON TWO DIMENSIONS, AND THE SPLIT SURVIVED AN ADVERSARY WHO REPORTED BOTH OF THEM DEAD. *** DIMENSION 1, BODY: the mahogany front board and bed become 'aluminum leather covered front boards of great strength, but which are nevertheless light' (1901, 1904). The front board IS THE LENS STANDARD - it carries the lens and shutter - so this is a structural material change in a load-bearing part, which the owner ratified as a body dimension on 2026-08-30. Pinned to the 1900|1901 boundary: the 1901 catalogue already carries the aluminium front, and an independent verification read of 1901 returned 'seal grain leather' where 1900 returns no such phrase. DIMENSION 2, FOCUSING: the adversary wrote that the 1904 'extra extension to bellows, operated by means of rack and pinion' is the bed extension and longer bellows 'which the researcher already excluded as entailed'. THAT MISREADS THE BRIEF - the brief excluded only the LONGER BELLOWS, as entailed by the bed extension; the bed extension is the PARENT fact, not an excluded one. An added close-focus extension with its own geared drive, where 1898 and 1900 offer only 'an index for focusing', is added focusing hardware and counts as one fact with the bellows inside it. *** THE SPLIT IS ROBUST TO THE ONE THING NOBODY COULD READ. *** A verification agent spent 16 fetches on whether the 1900 catalogue already says 'rack and pinion for fine focusing' for the Nos. 4 and 5 and returned NOT SOURCED at about 70/30 - the relay affirmed it seven times unprompted and denied it three, and the agent would not certify it. It does not matter: if 1900 already had the geared drive the boundary change is front board plus an added extension; if it did not, the change is front board plus a drive that went from index-only to geared. TWO DIMENSIONS EITHER WAY. THE SHUTTER CHANGE IS NOT COUNTED - pneumatic release to Eastman Triple Action Pneumatic to Kodak Automatic is a running change landing INSIDE the improved period, not at the boundary. KODAK PRINTED THESE AS ONE MODEL, NOT TWO - no 'Improved' in any heading, and never two versions of one number on the shelf at once, the successor simply replacing its predecessor on the page. The descriptors here are catalogue labels, not Kodak product names. THE ACCESSORY TRAP: AA-13's film column reads '104 + glass plate adapter'. Kodak's 1898 text makes plates an OPTION - 'when used with plates may be focused on the ground glass IF DESIRED'. DO NOT CREATE PLATE VARIANTS. PRICE CONFLICT RECORDED, NOT RESOLVED: AA-13 gives $66.00/$82.50 where Kodak's own 1898, 1900, 1901 and 1903 catalogues give $25.00. Two Kodak documents, three to one apart. SOURCE-HANDLING NOTE FOR THIS SLICE: the WebFetch relay was caught FABRICATING WHEN LED - four times independently, once inventing 'a dial to select the SHUTTER SPEED' to complete a page truncated at 'the only one to have a d', where the real next sentence says the earlier models had a SLIDER to set the FOCUSING DISTANCE. 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. THE FILM NUMBER IS AN ATTRIBUTION, NOT A KODAK DESIGNATION ON THIS ROW. Kodak's catalogues of this period name the cartridge by exposure count and picture size - 'N. C. Film Cartridge, 12 exposures (4 x 5)' - not by number. The number reaches this catalogue from AA-13 and from museum records. Kodak DOES print a film number later in the era: the 1927 catalogue and Kodak's own No. 3A Panoram booklet both print 'No. A 122', which is why that one row carries no caveat. Values resting on VULGAR FRACTIONS are treated as unreliable: these scans return different fractions on repeat reads of the same page while prose, model names, shutter names, dollar figures and INTEGERS stay stable. EVERY row-shape call in this slice was decided on an integer, on prose, or on a dollar figure. NO PRICE IS RECORDED. AA-13's price column is not a list price, and in this slice the gap is measurable: AA-13 and Kodak's own catalogues agree to the cent for the Panorams ($10.00/$20.00/$40.00), the 3B Quick Focus ($12.00) and the No. 2 Stereo ($15.00), and disagree by a factor of two to three for the Cartridge Kodaks and the No. 4A Folding Kodak. 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 presence contradicts AA-13 the conflict is recorded on the row and NOT resolved. DATING: NONE EXISTS. No serial-to-year mapping and no date code was ever published for any Kodak of this era. Specimen serials are recorded where a museum photographed one, for provenance only and NOT decodable: No. 4 Panoram Model C 10368 and Model D 12238; No. 4 Screen Focus 2274; 3B Quick Focus 4763K, 9066K and 7899K; Stereo Kodak Model 1 LENS numbers 52570 and 53277; No. 4 Series C Eastman Plate Camera 792. The trailing K on the Quick Focus serials is NOT SOURCED - no decode exists in anything reachable.

Fitted Lens

rapid rectilinear, "carefully tested"

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

4 x 5 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1897