Snappa (folding)

1902 advertisement scanned by Uwe Kulick  (Image rights)

The Snappa was made by Rochester Optical and Camera Co. around 1902. It is a folding bed magazine camera. The chief attraction of the camera was the special drawer in its back. This drawer is the magazine which can be loaded with 24 film sheets or 12 glass plates. When this drawer is just drawn out of the side and pushed back in, the plate or sheet in the focal plane is exchanged automatically. This mechanism was advertised as "The Magic Magazine". The camera has a brilliant viewfinder, an Auto shutter with speeds 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/25 and 1/100 sec. plus T and B mode, a vertically movable lens standard, and probably always quite a good lens, for example one from Goerz, or a Plantograph lens of Bausch & Lomb.