Kodak Retina I
The Kodak Retina I is a vertical spring folder for 135 format.
The original Kodak Retina (type 117) is a historically significant camera, because Kodak introduced the now ubiquitous daylight-loading 135 cartridge for this camera. (Earlier 35mm cameras required manually spooling bulk 35mm cine film into proprietary cassettes.) The design of the Retina borrowed significantly from the 127-film Vollenda which had been manufactured by the August Nagel Camera Works until its purchase and re-christening as Kodak AG.
The Retina I models are distinguished from the II and III series by being scale-focused, rather than using a rangefinder.
The eventual triumph of the 135 format owed much to the acceptance of the Retina as a compact, precision 35mm camera, as well as to the success of lower-priced alternatives such as those manufactured by Argus.
The following is a list of Retina I cameras produced from 1934 to 1940/1941? and 1945 to 1950.
- Type 117 Retina - 1934 to 1935
- Type 118 Retina - 1935 to 1936
- Type 119 Retina I - 1936 to 1938
- Type 126 Retina I - 1936 to 1937
- Type 141 Retina I - 1937 to 1939
- Type 143 Retina I - 1938 to 1939
- Type 148 Retina I - 1939 to 1940
- Type 149 Retina I - 1939 to 1940
- Type 167 Retina I - 1940 - ? 1941
- Kodak AG stopped camera production in the summer of 1941. Plant was requisitioned by German government to make time-fuses.
- First camera parts for post-war production manufactured in July 1945.
- Type 010 Retina I - November 1945 to June 1949
- Type 013 Retina I - August 1949 to December 1950
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| Various Kodak Retina I models | |||||||||||
