No. 4A Folding Kodak Model B

Format

126 roll film

System

Kodak No. 4A Folding

Shutter

B. & L. Automatic

Focusing

"Rising and sliding front, rack and pinion for focusing" (Kodak, 1910). SMG describes a 1909-12 specimen as "Sliding rack focussing" - independent corroboration for the late side

Metering

none

Spec Notes

THE IMPROVED GENERATION, split on the owner's 2026-08-30 ruling - see the wood-front row for both dimensions and for why the focusing one is solid. *** KODAK NEVER PRINTED 'MODEL B'. *** Asked of six catalogue years - 1906, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1912, 1913 - and of the May 1906 factory instruction booklet, no letter appears anywhere; the 1910 catalogue refers to it only as 'No. 4A Folding Kodak' or '4A Kodak'. The letter is AA-13's, written in 1999. The row is named for it anyway, following the slice-9b precedent where 'Pocket Kodak Model 97' is named for a letter Kodak never printed, because that is the name a user searches. *** AA-13'S LETTER SCHEME IS INCOMPLETE. *** SMG co8194820 holds a 'No. 4A Folding Kodak Model C' dated 1909-1912 - INSIDE this row's claimed 1908-1915 span - and AA-13 contains no Model C entry at all. This is the Panoram failure mode repeating: a model letter that exists in a retrospective list and nowhere in the contemporary record. THE APPARENT CORROBORATION IS LAUNDERED AA-13: historiccamera 683 and 684 reproduce AA-13's exact dates, its exact wood-front/metal-front pair and its automatic focusing lock, and cite nothing. Counting them would have been counting AA-13 twice. PRICE CONFLICT RECORDED, NOT RESOLVED: AA-13 gives $103.00/$109.50 against Kodak's $85.00 in 1906 and $35.00 in 1907 and 1910. 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, focal length about 8 inches (Kodak prints a fraction the scans corrupt)

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

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

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1908