No. 4 Folding Kodak

Format

roll film via Eastman-Walker roll holder; glass plates from 1892

System

Kodak Folding

Shutter

Eastman sector, self-capping, time and instantaneous; Barker shutter with rotating stops and adjustable speed from 1892

Focusing

ground glass from 1892

Metering

none

Spec Notes

The launch camera was ROLL FILM ONLY - it could not take plates at all, and the Glass Plate line begins with the 1892 rebuild rather than with the camera. THE 1892 MODEL IS CARRIED AS A GENERATION RATHER THAN AS ITS OWN ROW, and that is an editorial call rather than an evidence question: Kodak names three generations where AA-13 names two, and AA-13's line is the naming spine slices 7 and 8 both used. THE EASTMAN-WALKER ROLL HOLDER IS AN ACCESSORY AND MUST NEVER BECOME A CATALOGUE ROW - Kodak's own words are that 'the roll holder is interchangeable with our plate holders', it was made in sizes fitted to each camera including non-Kodak bodies, and on 1890-92 examples it carries its own serial matched to the body. 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

Rapid Rectilinear

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

4 x 5 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1890