No. 4A Speed Kodak

Format

126 roll film

System

Kodak Speed

Shutter

Kodak Focal Plane - "the exposures are made by means of a curtain, with an adjustable opening", 36 speeds from 1/5 to 1/1000 sec by adjusting curtain aperture and tension (SMG co8083851)

Focusing

rack and pinion; rising and sliding front; focusing scale

Metering

none

Spec Notes

*** THE RESEARCH BRIEF MARKED THE DECIDING QUESTION 'NOT SOURCED' AND RECOMMENDED TWO ROWS ANYWAY, ON GROUNDS THAT ARE NOT A DIMENSION - 'two different-format cameras introduced three years apart' is format plus a DATE. That reasoning is discarded. THE ADVERSARIAL PASS RESOLVED THE QUESTION AND THE ROWS NOW STAND ON TWO CLEAN DIMENSIONS. *** Kodak names this camera's shutter 'the Kodak Focal Plane Shutter' and the No. 1A's 'the well-known Graflex focal plane construction' IN THE SAME 1910 CATALOGUE, and the names prove nothing after Kodak acquired Folmer & Schwing - so the question was settled on MECHANISM instead. This camera: a curtain with AN ADJUSTABLE OPENING, 36 speeds, slow limit 1/5. The No. 1A: a curtain with A SERIES OF SLOTS OF VARYING WIDTHS plus a speed tension regulator, 24 speeds (SMG: 'adjustable for 6 tensions and four curtain apertures' - and 6 x 4 = 24), slow limit 1/10. Four discrete slots against a continuously adjustable aperture is TWO DESIGNS. Both reach 1/1000, which is the one thing they share and why the single-mechanism story looked plausible. The speed counts are integers from museum HTML, not from the corrupt scans. Kodak's naming is stable and never crossed across 1908, 1909, 1910, 1912 and 1913 - 'Graflex' does not appear in the 1908 catalogue at all. *** DO NOT CLAIM A BOX-VERSUS-FOLDER SPLIT. BOTH ARE FOLDING BELLOWS CAMERAS. *** The 1910 phrase 'the shutter is incorporated in the body of the box' means the SHUTTER BOX; SMG titles the 1A record '1A Speed Kodak folding camera' and the 4A 'Folding camera for 126 rollfilm', and both have rack-and-pinion focusing on a bed. Claiming architecture here would be a fabrication. A PROBABLE THIRD DIMENSION IS NOT COUNTED: this camera has a rising and sliding front and the 1A does not, confirmed in 1910 and again in 1912 - but the 1912 spec-list read returned internally inconsistent answers and no weight rests on it. CONFLICT RECORDED, NOT RESOLVED: THIS CAMERA IS ABSENT FROM THE 1913 CATALOGUE though AA-13 runs it to 1913. Two differently-worded passes agree, and the second correctly reported that the No. 4A FOLDING Kodak IS present in the same book, so the relay was discriminating between similar names rather than blanket-denying. No 1911 catalogue was read. FILM ADVANCE AND BACK TYPE: NOT SOURCED. 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

1908: B. & L. Zeiss Tessar Series IIB No. 6, f/6.3, or a Goerz Dagor; the camera was also sold without a lens. From 1909: Zeiss Kodak Anastigmat f/6.3

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

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

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1908