Name/Title
CameraEntry/Object ID
2026.15.1.1Description
Folding camera with a wooden drop-down base and with no maker's mark. It has a Unicum shutter. It is for 4x5" photos. It has an Eastman Kodak film door with Canada patent numbers.
The Unicum shutter was one of the earliest successful photographic leaf (or diaphragm-type) shutters and was manufactured by the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company in Rochester, New York. It was patented in 1891 and became widely used on American cameras during the late 1890s and early 1900s.
Before the Unicum, many cameras used simple drop shutters or external shutters mounted in front of the lens. The Unicum was built into the lens assembly and provided more reliable timed exposures. It became a standard shutter on many better-quality American cameras of the period. true iris diaphragm.
I asked Chat GPT to identify the manufacturer. Here are some insights it had about the camera:
One thing I find especially intriguing is that it has no visible maker's plate. Many Rochester makers attached paper labels or decals rather than brass nameplates, and after 125 years those labels are often completely gone. That may be why the camera appears anonymous today even though it was originally sold under a brand name.
At this point, if I had to describe it for a museum catalog, I would probably write:
Unidentified 4×5 folding plate camera, ca. 1903–1910, fitted with a Unicum shutter and Kodak Premo Film Back Adapter. Possibly assembled or modified from commercially available photographic components.
The camera has too many professionally manufactured components working together to look like a garage-built project.
Looking at your camera:
• The camera construction appears roughly 1898–1908.
• The Unicum shutter fits that period nicely.
• The film adapter is based on patents from 1903.
That's not a contradiction, but it does suggest the camera could have begun life as a plate camera and later received the Premo adapter.
Photographers commonly upgraded this way.
The camera almost looks like:
• a small maker's product using purchased Kodak accessories,
or
• a locally rebuilt camera assembled from available parts.Collection
Benicia Historical Museum Collection
