photax
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Post by photax on Mar 10, 2010 13:20:20 GMT -5
Hi ! This is a funny little Bakelite camera: The VP Twin for 16 exposures on 127 roll film. The first model was introduced in 1935 by Elliot Ltd., Birmingham and was produced again in 1952 ( with a “bloomed lens” – whatever that means ? non reflecting ? blossomed ? ). I read on the Net that this cameras had been sold in three parts ( front, back and lens ) by Woolworth for 6d a piece, because Woolworth promised to sell things for not more than 6d. Is there a Englishman who can tell me if this is a true story ? And how much are 6d ? This is a real low-end camera, which in all probability produced blurred pictures, but I like the simplicity of this three-part plastic fantastic. MIK    |
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Mar 10, 2010 14:05:16 GMT -5
MIK,
"Bloomed" = "Coated".
Although I thought it usually referred to a lens that had acquired a natural coating due to age.
I also thought that "VP" was a Kodak trade mark meaning Vest Pocket that was first used about 1912.
Mickey
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Mar 11, 2010 11:26:38 GMT -5
Hi Mik,
I had one of these cameras in the late 1940s, so it would have been the earlier one without a bloomed lens. If you could avoid camera shake the pictures were about the same definition as those from a cheap box camera, but being small negatives they wouldn't enlarge to much more than 2 1/4 in by 3 1/4 in, or 6x9cm without losing definition.
Bloomed was an early term used in the UK for coating. It had a bluish tinge and only the front element of a lens was coated (in the case of the VP Twin, the ONLY element was the front element).
In the early 1930s Woolworth kept rigidly to its policy of 3p or 6p per item and often priced a more expensive item in "parts". As far as I remember, this policy was abandoned in the late 1930s even though the company was still sub-titled "The 3p and 6p store".
I don't remember the VP Twin ever being sold in parts. I seem to remember in the late 1930s the price of the VP Twin, sold complete, not in parts, was 2/6d (two shillings and sixpence). This was five weeks of my pocket money and I never saved enough to get one. Using the Retail Price Index, 2/6d in 1939 equates to £5.70 today.
When the VP Twin was reintroduced after the war (1950s?) I believe the price had climbed to 7/6d (seven shillings and sixpence), about half the price of a cheap box camera.
For those who don't remember pre-decimalisation UK coinage, there were 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound, or 240 pence to the pound. So 6d, or sixpence, would be 0.25p in decimal coinage with 100 pence to the pound.
On price tickets and in advertisements the pounds, shillings and pence were separated by a slash such as £4/17/6. A short dash was often used to indicate 0 pence such as 15/- (fifteen shillings). A dash was never used to indicate 0 pounds. Quite often prices were quoted only in shillings and pence, such as 37/6 instead of £1/17/6.
It sounds confusing, but we grew up using it, and it fitted in quite neatly with the old Imperial weights system of ounces, pounds, stones, hundredweights and tons.
Mickey: I'm not absolutely certain but I don't think VP was ever registered as a Kodak trademark or logo, though VPK, for Vest Pocket Kodak, probably was.
PeterW
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Post by John Parry on Mar 11, 2010 16:13:54 GMT -5
Peter
When you grew up able to perform long division in pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, the future was not only bright - it contained decimalisation!
Regeads - John
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Mar 11, 2010 18:57:02 GMT -5
John, And if you were unable to extract the square root of something like £121/19/5, by longhand, you hadn't lived  . Silly maths department:A male adder and a female adder met, fell in love, married and wanted children. "But we're only adders," the female adder wailed. "How can we multiply?" "Easy," said the male adder. "We use five-figure log tables." |
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Mar 12, 2010 2:41:42 GMT -5
PeterW, "And if you were unable to extract the square root of something like £121/19/5, by longhand, you hadn't lived ." Am I dead? Numbers terrify me. Always have. I use them when I must but would prefer not to be found in their company. In all my 77 years I have never, ever, found a square root. I have not been asked for one nor found a need for one. Not once. I repeat - Never. Ever. Period● If I should, by accident, come upon a square root I would not know what to do with it. I know how to utilize ginger root and carrots and even parsnips and some other subterranian species but what on earth would I do with a square root? Carrots are conical. Parsnips too - almost. Potatoes are round - sort of. Ginger is lumpy and bumpy. But a SQUARE root? Ridiculous. Mickey |
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Post by GeneW on Mar 12, 2010 14:08:25 GMT -5
Mickey, I'm still chuckling! Thanks for the humour! Gene "And if you were unable to extract the square root of something like £121/19/5, by longhand, you hadn't lived ." Am I dead? Numbers terrify me. Always have. I use them when I must but would prefer not to be found in their company. In all my 77 years I have never, ever, found a square root. I have not been asked for one nor found a need for one. Not once. I repeat - Never. Ever. Period● If I should, by accident, come upon a square root I would not know what to do with it. I know how to utilize ginger root and carrots and even parsnips and some other subterranian species but what on earth would I do with a square root? Carrots are conical. Parsnips too - almost. Potatoes are round - sort of. Ginger is lumpy and bumpy. But a SQUARE root? Ridiculous. Mickey |
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photax
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Post by photax on Mar 12, 2010 15:55:52 GMT -5
Hi Peter ! Thank you very much for your detailed explanations ! You always got the answer to my questions  . Never heard of “stone” and “ hundredweight” as units of weight before and your fare management system must have been a complicated one. I have to agree with Mickey: I also never used square roots in my whole life ( neither for calculating nor for cooking ). Learned about it at school and instantly forgot about it… MIK |
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Mar 12, 2010 19:37:20 GMT -5
Hi Mik, OOPS! department: I wrote: I must have been half asleep - or living in the past! 6p in pre-decimal UK coinage was equivalent to 2.5p, NOT 0.25p as I said. Sorry  PeterW |
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Mar 13, 2010 5:50:07 GMT -5
Hi Mik, OOPS! department: I wrote: I must have been half asleep - or living in the past! 6p in pre-decimal UK coinage was equivalent to 2.5p, NOT 0.25p as I said. Sorry PeterW Tch tch. I am not going to say a word about the brain befuddling dangers of meddling with √. ;D Mickey |
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Post by John Parry on Mar 19, 2010 11:14:07 GMT -5
Too modest people... Every photographer is constantly searching for the square root of minus one....
Regards - John
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Post by Randy on Mar 19, 2010 12:22:46 GMT -5
Square roots or whatever, I'll bet my wife could cook it. |
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Mar 19, 2010 13:24:23 GMT -5
John,
Aye, aye, Sir.
That's why sailors use two ayes as the standard reply to a command - plus aye and minus aye.
And I'll bet that fell on stony ground!
PeterW
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Mar 20, 2010 16:59:27 GMT -5
"And I'll bet that fell on stony ground!
PeterW "
So stony that it couldn't take root.
Mickey
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Mar 21, 2010 19:05:28 GMT -5
Mickey: Sorry, I thought maybe someone would get it. You're quite right, Mickey, you can't cook square roots, but as you love mathematics I will try to elucidate - just for you. My "aye, aye" was prompted by John's career at sea and was a rather poor homophonic joke to refer to the lower case letter i which mathematicians use to denote the square root of minus one (except in electrical theory where j is used because i already denotes current). Blame my love of crossword puzzles. Every square root must have two values, plus and minus. Thus +2 x +2 = 4, and -2 x -2 = 4. Hence my minus aye and plus aye. i, or the square root of minus one, is an imaginary number but a very useful one because it can be used in mathematical equations just as if it were a real number. It is as old as recorded history. Some years ago a papyrus was discovered that showed the ancient Egyptians used it in calculating the volume of a pyramid. Much more recently it has been used in calculating the trajectory of planets and satellites, so the moon shot and the various probes to other planets would have been impossible without it. More in keeping with this forum, i is used in several computer programming languages so we probably wouldn't have the internet, and thus no Camera Collectors Forum, without it. It is also used in advanced lens calculations, so without it we wouldn't have the lenses we have today, or even those six-element lenses such as the Planar, Biotar, Sonnar, Summitar and so on we have had since the 1920s and 1930s. Zoom lenses would have been just a dream. Maybe this is what John had in mind when he said For something that doesn't exist, i is incredibly useful. PeterW |
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. Never heard of “stone” and “ hundredweight” as units of weight before and your fare management system must have been a complicated one. 
