No. 4A Folding Kodak

Format

126 roll film

System

Kodak No. 4A Folding

Shutter

No. 2 Bausch and Lomb Automatic

Focusing

the front is pulled out BY HAND against an index plate - "Grasp the springs at bottom of front board; pull out the front until the pointer on the lower left hand side of front board is over the figures on the index plate nearest the estimated distance" - with an automatic focusing lock detenting at 8, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50 and 100 feet

Metering

none

Spec Notes

*** THIS SPLIT WAS THE ONE CALL IN THE SLICE FLAGGED FOR THE BUILD OWNER, AND THE OWNER RULED FOR TWO ROWS ON 2026-08-30. *** DIMENSION 1, FOCUSING, GOT STRONGER UNDER ATTACK - and the research brief's description of it was wrong. The decisive document is KODAK'S OWN INSTRUCTION BOOKLET, 'Picture Taking with the No. 4A Folding Kodak', printed May 1906, quoted in the focusing field above: the front was pulled out BY HAND. 'Rack and pinion' is ABSENT from that booklet. So the 1908 change is a DRIVE change, hand push-pull to geared, which is a mechanism. THE SYMMETRIC SILENCE TEST makes this as good as an argument from silence gets: 'rack and pinion' IS in the 1906 catalogue - for the Cartridge Kodaks, page 30 - and is not applied to this camera; 'automatic focusing lock' IS still in the 1910 catalogue, on ten other models including five Folding Pocket Kodaks and the folding Brownies, and is not applied to this camera. Kodak had both phrases available in both years and chose. THE BRIEF'S FRAMING MUST NOT BE REPEATED: the lock is a DETENT, a fitting, not an alternative mechanism - the 1910 catalogue lists the No. 3A Folding Pocket Kodak with the automatic focusing lock AND rack and pinion, so they are not alternatives. Write the change as 'hand-extended front with automatic focusing lock, to rack-and-pinion focusing'. DIMENSION 2, THE WOOD FRONT, RESTS ON AA-13 ALONE and that is what the owner ruled sufficient. Kodak's own catalogues are SILENT, not contradicting: asked neutrally, the 1906 catalogue says of the part carrying the lens 'Absent - the catalogue describes the lens itself and the shutter, but contains no description of the part carrying the lens', and the same for 1910, 1912 and 1913. Kodak's 'aluminum framework' (1906/07) and 'aluminum box and bed' (1910) describe a DIFFERENT PART from the lens standard. The one dated specimen record points the other way and is recorded: SMG co8194820, a 'No. 4A Folding Kodak Model C' dated 1909-1912 - inside the supposed metal-front era - lists materials 'mahogany (wood) and leather'. THE SIBLING PRECEDENT SUPPORTS AA-13: the Cartridge Kodaks in this same slice have a Kodak-documented mahogany-to-aluminium front board transition, so a wood-to-metal front in this era is real for Kodak; the only question was whether the 4A shared it. historiccamera datasheets were used for NOTHING load-bearing here. 683 and 684 reproduce AA-13's exact dates, its exact wood-front/metal-front pair and its focusing lock, and cite nothing; 673 and 597 cite nothing either. A laundered copy of the source it appears to corroborate is not corroboration. 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

Double Combination Rapid Rectilinear, speed f/8, "which covers the plate sharp to the very corners"

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

4-1/4 x 6-1/2 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1906