No. 4 Panoram Kodak

Format

103 roll film

System

Kodak Panoram

Shutter

Panoram - there is no separate shutter: a focal-plane slot travels with the revolving lens mount. Two traverse speeds, set by a lever behind the finder

Focusing

fixed

Metering

none

Spec Notes

*** TEN AA-13 LINES BECOME THREE ROWS AND THIS IS THE LARGEST FOLD IN THE SLICE. THE MODEL LETTERS FOLD AT ZERO DIMENSIONS. *** KODAK NEVER PRINTED THEM. Nine catalogue years were read (1901, 1903, 1905, 1908, 1912, 1913, 1917, 1920, 1927) and BOTH surviving Kodak instruction books, and no letter appears anywhere; Kodak issued ONE booklet covering both sizes, with no version, no old-style/new-style and no patent date. Every candidate dimension was hunted and died. FILM ADVANCE: winding key and red window, 1900 to 1928, all three sizes, from Kodak's own booklet - 'Turn the key slowly to the left until Fig. 1 appears before the red window'. The No. 1 counts 1,3,5 and the No. 4 counts A,B,C,D, which is BACKING-PAPER PRINTING, not a mechanism. SHUTTER: two speeds throughout, same spring drive, same tension lever. LENS: meniscus throughout, no anastigmat anywhere. SPIRIT LEVEL: one, throughout. THE SPEC-LIST-CHANGE HUNT FOUND EXACTLY ONE SILENT REVISION IN NINE YEARS and it does not help: Kodak's printed block reads 'Capacity, 5 exposures without reloading' in 1901, 1903, 1905 and 1908 and 'Capacity, 4 exposures' from 1912, with no rename - FILM CAPACITY IS NOT A DIMENSION, and it tracks the 103 cartridge rather than the camera. The change is bracketed to 1908-1912 and not pinned. ASSIGNABILITY FAILS INDEPENDENTLY: SMG dates this camera's 'Model B' to 1894-1900, impossible for a line beginning 1899 - 1894 is the patent date - and neither of the two SMG records for this size says what its letter means or cites any source for it. *** THE ROW AGAINST THE No. 1 IS EARNED ON FORMAT AND LENS FOCAL LENGTH, NOT ON SWING ANGLE. *** The research brief claimed format AND the 142-degree angle as two dimensions. THE ANGLE IS ENTAILED: it is the arc the lens sweeps, fixed by focal length and picture length. Kodak's own 1920 wording says the lens 'swings in arc of 142 degrees', and the arithmetic closes on stable integers - a 12 inch picture over a 5 inch lens is 2.4 radians, 137 degrees, against a printed 142. What is NOT entailed is the focal length itself: Kodak prints 5 inches here against 3-5/8 inches on the No. 1, and a meniscus of 3-5/8 would cover this film - the 5 inch lens is a design choice that sets the arc radius and the camera's depth. 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

meniscus, fixed aperture, fixed focus; Kodak prints "length of focus of lens, 5 inches" in the 1901, 1903 and 1905 spec blocks

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

3-1/2 x 12 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1899