Post by PeterW on Sept 19, 2006 16:54:50 GMT -5
Hi Mickey. I've started a new thread with this as the cleaning fluid one was getting rather long. Warning, long rambling screed follows.
The Lukos shutter started a stirring in the depths of the chaotic database I call my memory, but unfortunately the retrieval function doesn’t work as well it used to. So I did a spot of digging in my even more chaotic ‘library’ which is a random collection of books, magazines and folders full of paper filed in no particular order. What follows is roughly my train of thought as I was digging:
Lukos was a German shutter used among others by ICA who, before WW1 made cameras for Houghton in the UK (later Houghton-Butcher, later Ensign) who fitted English lenses to them. Both Houghton and Butcher had close links with Aldis, a UK lens maker founded in 1901. But I’ve never heard of Aldis making cameras. Other lenses used by both Houghton and Butcher were Beck and Cooke.
Quite often Houghton did not put its company name on the cameras made by ICA, just the name of the lens manufacturer and the Houghton model name. An early form of ‘house branding’. Ah! Hang on. What’s this? Houghton used Cameo as a model name before 1914 for some of these ICA-built cameras. Hey! … Aldis Cameo!!
I checked in the Lens Collectors Vade Mecum and found that in its early days Aldis depended largely on the sale of a lens called the Uno, a three-glass lens in two components normally with the cemented pair in front of the iris. The products were the Uno, the Series II f 6.0 and Series III f 7.7. These were listed in the 1921-1926 adverts. “The Uno was a sharp fairly contrasty lens and fully usable today if used with care.”
It would seem that your lens is an Aldis Uno Series III, but the Vade Mecum doesn’t say when the Series III was introduced. I would hazard a guess quite early because Aldis listed a dozen or more lenses before 1920.
However, the supply of ICA cameras to Houghton obviously dried up with the start of WW1 in 1914. It may have restarted between 1920 and 1926, before ICA became part of Zeiss Ikon, but I think that’s unlikely as in 1915 Houghton and Butcher merged their camera sections and set up a joint manufacturing facility to make themselves independent of cameras from Germany, and used a variety of English shutters. The two companies mrged to become Houghton-Butcher in 1926. They used the trademark Ensign from 1930. The name Cameo was used again but it was now only labelled Ensign Cameo.
I couldn’t find any mention of a 1920s camera from either Houghton or Butcher or Houghton-Butcher called a Cameo.
Historical note: Houghton originally had many of its cameras made by Hüttig, but Hüttig joined with Krügener, Wünsche and Carl Zeiss Palmos in 1909 to form ICA, so Houghton’s German-built cameras changed name but not actual maker.
So, putting two and two together (and quite possibly making four and a half) I would guess that your camera originated as a Dresden-built ICA with a Lukos shutter, made for Houghton in the UK where it was fitted with an Aldis Uno Series III lens and named the Aldis Cameo (shades of Cosina!). Date? I’ve got a vague suspicion that the three-speed Lukos II appeared around 1908, so I’d hazard between 1909 and 1914. If you can find pictures of ICA cameras around this time you may find its likeness.
I know this rather disjointed, rambling information doesn’t magically reform your melted shutter blades, and my pneumatic shutter is hopelessly wrong for parts. However, I think it means we can identify your camera, and you can look out for a junk ICA camera round about this period, or a Hüttig who also used Lukos shutters, or possibly a Contessa-Nettel and other German camera of the period. I’ll also keep my eyes open for a Lukos II shutter, and ask some of my UK camera collecting friends who, like me, have big junk boxes because they never throw anything away … just in case! You never know, stranger things have happened. It may be one is more likely to turn up in the UK than in the US.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. On some early Lukos shutters the blades weren’t vulcanite, they were thin card treated with some form of baked-on and rolled shellac, and yours obviously got rather drunk when you soused them in alcohol!
Phew!! All this brain work has made me quite thirsty. I’ll break off for a bit and pour myself a sherry.
PeterW
The Lukos shutter started a stirring in the depths of the chaotic database I call my memory, but unfortunately the retrieval function doesn’t work as well it used to. So I did a spot of digging in my even more chaotic ‘library’ which is a random collection of books, magazines and folders full of paper filed in no particular order. What follows is roughly my train of thought as I was digging:
Lukos was a German shutter used among others by ICA who, before WW1 made cameras for Houghton in the UK (later Houghton-Butcher, later Ensign) who fitted English lenses to them. Both Houghton and Butcher had close links with Aldis, a UK lens maker founded in 1901. But I’ve never heard of Aldis making cameras. Other lenses used by both Houghton and Butcher were Beck and Cooke.
Quite often Houghton did not put its company name on the cameras made by ICA, just the name of the lens manufacturer and the Houghton model name. An early form of ‘house branding’. Ah! Hang on. What’s this? Houghton used Cameo as a model name before 1914 for some of these ICA-built cameras. Hey! … Aldis Cameo!!
I checked in the Lens Collectors Vade Mecum and found that in its early days Aldis depended largely on the sale of a lens called the Uno, a three-glass lens in two components normally with the cemented pair in front of the iris. The products were the Uno, the Series II f 6.0 and Series III f 7.7. These were listed in the 1921-1926 adverts. “The Uno was a sharp fairly contrasty lens and fully usable today if used with care.”
It would seem that your lens is an Aldis Uno Series III, but the Vade Mecum doesn’t say when the Series III was introduced. I would hazard a guess quite early because Aldis listed a dozen or more lenses before 1920.
However, the supply of ICA cameras to Houghton obviously dried up with the start of WW1 in 1914. It may have restarted between 1920 and 1926, before ICA became part of Zeiss Ikon, but I think that’s unlikely as in 1915 Houghton and Butcher merged their camera sections and set up a joint manufacturing facility to make themselves independent of cameras from Germany, and used a variety of English shutters. The two companies mrged to become Houghton-Butcher in 1926. They used the trademark Ensign from 1930. The name Cameo was used again but it was now only labelled Ensign Cameo.
I couldn’t find any mention of a 1920s camera from either Houghton or Butcher or Houghton-Butcher called a Cameo.
Historical note: Houghton originally had many of its cameras made by Hüttig, but Hüttig joined with Krügener, Wünsche and Carl Zeiss Palmos in 1909 to form ICA, so Houghton’s German-built cameras changed name but not actual maker.
So, putting two and two together (and quite possibly making four and a half) I would guess that your camera originated as a Dresden-built ICA with a Lukos shutter, made for Houghton in the UK where it was fitted with an Aldis Uno Series III lens and named the Aldis Cameo (shades of Cosina!). Date? I’ve got a vague suspicion that the three-speed Lukos II appeared around 1908, so I’d hazard between 1909 and 1914. If you can find pictures of ICA cameras around this time you may find its likeness.
I know this rather disjointed, rambling information doesn’t magically reform your melted shutter blades, and my pneumatic shutter is hopelessly wrong for parts. However, I think it means we can identify your camera, and you can look out for a junk ICA camera round about this period, or a Hüttig who also used Lukos shutters, or possibly a Contessa-Nettel and other German camera of the period. I’ll also keep my eyes open for a Lukos II shutter, and ask some of my UK camera collecting friends who, like me, have big junk boxes because they never throw anything away … just in case! You never know, stranger things have happened. It may be one is more likely to turn up in the UK than in the US.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. On some early Lukos shutters the blades weren’t vulcanite, they were thin card treated with some form of baked-on and rolled shellac, and yours obviously got rather drunk when you soused them in alcohol!
Phew!! All this brain work has made me quite thirsty. I’ll break off for a bit and pour myself a sherry.
PeterW