DeJur

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The DeJur-Amsco Corporation of Shelton, Connecticut, and later New York, was founded in the 1920s by Ralph and Harry DeJur.[1][2] The company's earliest patents relate to variable capacitors (condensers) used in radio tuning circuits.[3]

Later, the company traded in photographic goods, and apparently made some of their own. Later, DeJur also sold office equipment including copiers and dictation recorders. The company was eventually sold in 1974, when Ralph DeJur retired.

The company was well-known for cine equipment, and also sold enlargers[4] and exposure meters. These meters were certainly made in the USA, and it seems that DeJur made at least some of them, or designed them and had them made.[5] DeJur-Amsco also imported cameras for sale under its own brand, from companies including Neidig and Tōkyō Kōgaku (Topcon). The Petri camera shown below still bears the Petri name prominently, however (it may be that Petri themselves refused to have the camera completely rebranded; Petri had a US distributing company of their own at this time, so DeJur would not have had exclusive access to the product).



Cameras


Notes

  1. The DeJUR-Amsco page at Exposuremeters.net.
  2. There is a theatre named the Harry DeJur Playhouse in New York.
  3. US Patent 1786134, Electric Condenser, filed December 1923 and granted December 1930 to Louis E. Shaw and the DeJur-Amsco Corporation, and US Patent 1860670, Air Condenser, filed January 1927 and granted May 1932 to Charles Hardy and DeJur-Amsco; at Espacenet, the patent search facility of the European Patent Office.
  4. US Patent 2312562, Photographic Apparatus, filed April 1941 and granted March 1943 to Anthon A. Leonard, Otto Boesel and the DeJur Amsco Corporation, describing the design of the bellows focusing mechanism of an enlarger, allowing focus by movement either of the negative stage or the lens, and also allowing the negative to be tilted (e.g. for correction of converging verticals); at Espacenet.
  5. James Ollinger, discussing the Model 50 Autocritic in his Exposure Meter Collection suggests this model may have been made by Hickok, on the basis of similar styling to Hickok's own products. However, this record of a Federal Appeal Court decision in the Federal Reporter for 1956 shows that the company employed a Chief Engineer (Marlin Fogle), and was in dispute with him over the rights to an invention (an automatic, dual-range exposure meter) which had been patented in his name in 1952, while working for DeJur-Amsco; clearly, at least some of the exposure meters were true DeJur products.


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