Mackenstein

Advertisement from Le Photo-Revue Belge, 1902. scan courtesy Romuald Swieconek (Image rights)

Établissements Mackenstein were founded in 1872 by Hermann-Josef Mackenstein (* 1848 in Doveren; † 1924). The factory was located at 15 Rue des Carmes in Paris.

In the beginning, the company produced small mechanical parts for cameras. In 1888 Mackenstein’s factory assembled the very first film camera equipped with a single lens, able to film up to 20 images per second. This film camera resulted from the work of Louis Augustin Le Prince, inventor of the cinematograph.

The Mackenstein company made a range of its own cameras, up until 1914:

• Detective cameras
• Both mono and stereo jumelle cameras (as in the advertisement illustrated):
  • Jumelle réduite (mono)
  • Jumelle stéreo-panoramique
  • La Francia
  • Kallista (for circular stereo photographs)
• Strut-folding cameras
  • Simple strut-folders
  • La Francia strut-folding models (mono and stero)
• Chambres de voyage and others.
• 'Photo-livre'; camera disguised as a book.
• Studio cameras

Links

• Stereo Jumelle Mackenstein (c.1893)
• Mackenstein page at Collection G. Even's site
• Cameras Mackenstein on www.collection-appareils.fr by Sylvain Halgand
• Contemporary photographs taken with a Mackenstein camera in the Flickr Commons collection of the Bibliothèque de Toulouse: the photographs were taken in the early 20th century by Eugène Trutat, curator of the Toulouse Museum of Natural History and author of a number of books on photography (see several of Trutat's books at the Internet Archive). They show life in the Pyrenees. The majority are stereo pairs, and it seems likely that all, including the mono exposures, were taken with the same camera.
• Patents held by Hermann Mackenstein, at Espacenet, the Patent search facility of the European Patent Office:
  • Swiss Patent 5162 of 21 May 1892, Châssis photographique à rouleaux, numérotant ou repérant les clichés (Photographic frame for rolls, numbering or identifying the pictures), describing a roll-film back with a frame counter, incorporating a device to expose the margin of the picture to ambient light through perforated wheels, thus marking the frame number, and also numbers or letters to represent the roll number, etc.; in short, an early data-back.
  • Addition 335, of 1902, to French Patent 241003 of 1894, Perfectionnements apportés aux appareils photographiques, stéréoscopiques ou non (Improvements made to cameras, stereoscopic or not). The original patent is not in the database at Espacenet, and neither is an earlier addition of 1899 referred to in the text. However, it is clear that the first addition described a removable septum mounted in a stereo camera; this is to be put in place when the camera is to be used for stereo or simple photographs, or removed to allow panoramic photographs; the camera is thus one of the jumelles stéréo-panoramiques offered in the advertisement pictured above (and the original patent presumably describes the design of the camera without this facility). This second addition notes the risk that the photographer will forget to mount/demount the septum, and so waste plates and miss the desired photograph; also the risk that a demountable part may be lost. It goes on to describe a septum mounted on a sprung hinge, which erects itself automatically when the lens board is arranged for normal or stereo photography, and collapses when it is arranged for panoramic use.