iiif tripod screw size

[Anbaric]

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2 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

I have one Goerz VP Tenax that must have been made in 1916.
[The model itself was introduced in 1909]
It has a tripod screw that is much smaller in diameter than 1/4".
I could not find an explanation for this atypical screw size before.
With this new information It could well be 3/16", but how to measure?

You can buy BSW (Whitworth) screws in sizes including 3/16" for pennies (postage will probably cost you more than the screw if they aren't available locally), so it might be easiest to try one (carefully).

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[Roland Zwiers]

Thank you!

That is a good idea.

I have several friends in the UK who may be of help.

 

Roland

[zeitz]

ISO 1222:2010 defines tripod threads.  The full story is on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripod_(photography)

 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

Thank you, this is very interesting!

The Royal Society recommended different standards for smaller and larger cameras.

So Dutch terminology: English thread = 3/8"-16 Geman thread  = 1/4"-20 is basically wrong.

Still I have not yet seen a British camera with 3/8" thread.

And German cameras with 1/4" are known as export models.

 

Roland

[Anbaric]

I'd be a bit cautious about the Wikipedia claim that the RPS specified different threads for different sized cameras (though that would make sense, it may be an assumption by the editor, and the citation is just a description of the thread standard). The wording in the Journal doesn't go beyond giving several alternatives, though of course they might have been more explicit elsewhere. A later article from 1919 states that the British Manufacturers' Association had adopted standard tripod bushes of two sizes for 'small plate cameras', but I'm not sure what is mean by their terminology:

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What does option (2) mean?

Edited June 29, 2023 by Anbaric

[Roland Zwiers]

It is a hypothesis, but it seems that (2) is a typo for:

Continental thread 3/8-Whitworth (Standard insertion).

That would make much more sense.

 

After August 1914 the adjective 'German' was avoided in British photographic literature.

The same would happen again after September 1939.

The adjective "German'was usually replaced by 'Continental'.

 

Note that by 1919 German camera producers had long adopted the 3/8" Whitworth standard.
That may explain the (possibly wrong) Dutch terminology: German thread.

Roland

 

 

 

 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

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Note as well that many pre-1919 miniature cameras did not have a tripod bush.
I checked the miniatures in my collection like early box cameras, the VP Ensignette, the VP Kodak, the Piccolette, the Ernemann Liliput.
Instead of a tripod bush they usually have some kind of facility that allows them to stand on a flat surface.

By 1919 the British Manufacturers' Association may well have found this practise undesirable.
And so they recommended the addition of a tripod bush.
In order not to appear too dictatorial they gave two options:

• The standard British 1/4"
• The alternative German (correction: Continental) thread 

In photographic literature typos are not uncommon.
In this tread I have made several typos as well 🙂

Roland

 

[Anbaric]

I did wonder if it might be a typo, unless there is some other standard we aren't aware of, but not sure what 'insertion' would mean either way (there are of course screw-in inserts to convert 3/8" bushes to 1/4", but that doesn't seem to fit here).

[Anbaric]

Here's an interesting one, from a report in the Journal on the International Photographic Congress of Paris (1889) and Brussels (1891) - 'Photographic Society of Great Britain' was the former name of the RPS. Was this the moment when 3/8" Whitworth  became the Continental standard?

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In the year before the 1889 Exhibition, members of the Society had agreed to communicate the Whitworth Standards to their colleagues in Paris:

So perhaps the history is this: the PSGB/RPS adopted a series of Whitworth standards for camera screws, but did not necessarily specify which would be used for tripods. The IPC took these useful standards on board, but selected only one, 3/8", for tripod screws. Later, the BMA settled on 1/4" for tripod screws, maybe with 3/8" as a secondary option.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Anbaric

[Pyrogallol]

This has got interesting and detailed.

Can I throw in a question about another camera part we all take for granted - who invented the accessory shoe, which is now a “hot” shoe ? Has it always been the same size? when did it become a standardised size? Is there an international/British Standard covering it?

[Anbaric]

There is an ISO standard, which I think is the same size as the accessory shoes used on the early Leicas (or viewfinders etc. wouldn't be compatible across the decades) but I don't know if the standard dimensions pre-date the Leica. Did Leitz use an existing standard, or did they invent it?

Edit: This article claims the shoe goes back to Oskar Barnack.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Anbaric

[Roland Zwiers]

Indeed, this is even more interesting than I anticipated. 

My new hypothesis would be as follows.
In the 1880s the UK had several options for Whitworth standards:
3/16, 4/16. 5/16 and 6/16"
This made it difficult to select one standard.

Now in 1888 the Society wanted to make a wise suggestion:
Why don't we recommend these British standards (plural!) to the 1889 Paris Exhibition? 
After all, who can object to these superior, innovative, proven (etc.) British standards (plural!).
And so it was decided.

Then came the 1889 Paris Exhibition.
And something unexpected happened.
The Exhibition not only accepted the British proposal.
The Exhibition even selected one of the recommended standards as the standard.
So 3/8" was to become the new universal thread.

The Continent consequently adopted this universal thread.
Germany soon became the most important continental camera producer.
And so in Holland this 3/8" thread became known as the German thread.

The British delegation must have been at a loss.
They had a mandate for advertising British standards in general, but no mandate for selecting one of the four proposed standards.
So at home in the UK it was not yet settled at all which of the four Whitworth standards would become the British standard.
And now the delegation came home with the news that the Continent had decided for 3/8" 

And what happens in a proud imperial country that is used to rule the world?
If the Continent adopts 3/8", surely we British are important enough to select our own standard 🙂
And so the British selected 1/4"instead.
In Dutch terminonoly: English thread.

This story line is an hypothesis.
It shows how existing information can be combined in a plausible way.
But it can still be wrong 🙂 

Roland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

10 hours ago, Anbaric said:

There is an ISO standard, which I think is the same size as the accessory shoes used on the early Leicas (or viewfinders etc. wouldn't be compatible across the decades) but I don't know if the standard dimensions pre-date the Leica. Did Leitz use an existing standard, or did they invent it?

Edit: This article claims the shoe goes back to Oskar Barnack.

My hypothesis would be that Oskar Barnack created the accessory shoe in 1913 or 1914 for the removable viewfinder of the Ur-Leica.

After 1918 he started work on the socalled Handmuster camera, which stood model for the test cameras of 1923 ('Null-Serie').

The Handmuster had a fixed viewfinder, so the accessory shoe could get a new purpose.

For this Handmuster he needed to design a (Fodis) rangefinder and that rangefinder required an accessory shoe as well.

When the (Fodis) rangefinder was integrated in the camera body, the accessory shoe came in handy for flash photography.

 

Roland

[250swb]

10 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

Indeed, this is even more interesting than I anticipated. 

My new hypothesis would be as follows.
In the 1880s the UK had several options for Whitworth standards:
3/16, 4/16. 5/16 and 6/16"
This made it difficult to select one standard.

Now in 1888 the Society wanted to make a wise suggestion:
Why don't we recommend these British standards (plural!) to the 1889 Paris Exhibition? 
After all, who can object to these superior, innovative, proven (etc.) British standards (plural!).
And so it was decided.

Then came the 1889 Paris Exhibition.
And something unexpected happened.
The Exhibition not only accepted the British proposal.
The Exhibition even selected one of the recommended standards as the standard.
So 3/8" was to become the new universal thread.

The Continent consequently adopted this universal thread.
Germany soon became the most important continental camera producer.
And so in Holland this 3/8" thread became known as the German thread.

The British delegation must have been at a loss.
They had a mandate for advertising British standards in general, but no mandate for selecting one of the four proposed standards.
So at home in the UK it was not yet settled at all which of the four Whitworth standards would become the British standard.
And now the delegation came home with the news that the Continent had decided for 3/8" 

And what happens in a proud imperial country that is used to rule the world?
If the Continent adopts 3/8", surely we British are important enough to select our own standard 🙂
And so the British selected 1/4"instead.
In Dutch terminonoly: English thread.

This story line is an hypothesis.
It shows how existing information can be combined in a plausible way.
But it can still be wrong 🙂 

Roland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You appear to be making a nationalistic point, perhaps it is simply a pragmatic point. Britain was not in decline and did still have an influence 1889, indeed at the beginning of WW1 (1914) Wikipedia says 

"Britain remained the world's largest trading nation by a significant margin: in 1914 her import and export totals were larger by a third compared to Germany, and larger by 50 percent compared to the United States.[109] Britain was a top importer of foodstuffs, raw materials, and finished goods, much of which were re-exported to Europe or the United States.[110] In 1880 Britain purchased about half the world total in traded tea, coffee, and wheat, and just under half of the world's meat exports.[111] In that same year, more than 50 percent of world shipping was British owned, while British shipyards were constructing about four fifths of the world's new vessels in the 1890s.[112]"

So if you wanted to run a railway in India, repair a ship in the USA, or imagined making any goods that could be exported from Europe to the rest of the World choosing an established  national standard used around the World would have made sense. The Whitworth thread was standardised in 1840 when the Industrial Revolution in Europe was just getting going, metrification was only rolled out in 1850, so what were European manufacturers supposed to do because the metric thread only started to be standardised nearly fifty years later?

As for the exact Whitworth standard chosen consider that 'one size does not fit all' because some will already have been in use for many years without being formalised, they were not all dumped on industry in one go.

Edited June 30, 2023 by 250swb

[Roland Zwiers]

4 minutes ago, 250swb said:

You appear to be making a nationalistic point, perhaps it is simply a pragmatic point. Britain was not in decline and did still have an influence 1889, indeed at the beginning of WW1 (1914) Wikipedia says 

"Britain remained the world's largest trading nation by a significant margin: in 1914 her import and export totals were larger by a third compared to Germany, and larger by 50 percent compared to the United States.[109] Britain was a top importer of foodstuffs, raw materials, and finished goods, much of which were re-exported to Europe or the United States.[110] In 1880 Britain purchased about half the world total in traded tea, coffee, and wheat, and just under half of the world's meat exports.[111] In that same year, more than 50 percent of world shipping was British owned, while British shipyards were constructing about four fifths of the world's new vessels in the 1890s.[112]"

So if you wanted to run a railway in India, repair a ship in the USA, or imagined making any goods that could be exported from Europe to the rest of the World choosing an established  national standard used around the World would have made sense. The Whitworth thread was standardised in 1840 when the Industrial Revolution in Europe was just getting going, metrification was only rolled out in 1850, so what were European manufacturers supposed to do because the metric thread only started to be standardised nearly fifty years later?

As for the exact standard chosen consider that 'one size does not fit all'.

I fully agree!
In the 19th century Britain was leading the way.
Many British standards (rail gauges!) became international standards.
So it was entirely logical that the Royal Society proposed Whitworth standards (plural!) for the 1889 Paris Exhibition.

In my hypothetical storyline (based on the 1988 Photographic Journal presented by Anbaric) something unexpected happened from the British point of view.
The 1889 Paris Exposition selected one Whitworth standard (3/8") as the universal standard. 

So the Royal Society was not pleased at all.

• This could have been for nationalistic reasons (we do not like that the Continent tells us what should be the universal standard)
• It could also be for pragmatic reasons (the Continent misunderstood our proposal: one size does not fit all) 

To keep both options open is indeed an enrichment of the storyline.

Note, however, that in practise Britain seems to have settled for the 1/4"standard even for rather heavy cameras.
This is not logical from the one-size-does-not-fit-all perspective.

 

Roland

 

 

 

[250swb]

1 hour ago, Roland Zwiers said:

I fully agree!
In the 19th century Britain was leading the way.
Many British standards (rail gauges!) became international standards.
So it was entirely logical that the Royal Society proposed Whitworth standards (plural!) for the 1889 Paris Exhibition.

In my hypothetical storyline (based on the 1988 Photographic Journal presented by Anbaric) something unexpected happened from the British point of view.
The 1889 Paris Exposition selected one Whitworth standard (3/8") as the universal standard. 

So the Royal Society was not pleased at all.

• This could have been for nationalistic reasons (we do not like that the Continent tells us what should be the universal standard)
• It could also be for pragmatic reasons (the Continent misunderstood our proposal: one size does not fit all) 

To keep both options open is indeed an enrichment of the storyline.

Note, however, that in practise Britain seems to have settled for the 1/4"standard even for rather heavy cameras.
This is not logical from the one-size-does-not-fit-all perspective.

 

Roland

 

 

 

In terms of manufacturing Europe was only just catching up, so choosing one standard makes perfect sense given they'd done nothing much so far and one standard could be easily integrated. But Britain had been making and exporting things for many years, indeed a hundred years, and in terms of continuity it's going the be pretty stupid announcing all new steam engines are going to now be made to one Whitworth standard when that would make obsolete many steam engines in current use. The Victorian era had a great capacity for integrating 'old' systems with new systems to keep the wheels kept turning, and the country with most 'old' systems through trial and error was Britain. But it clearly wasn't a problem at the time so saying Britain somehow got grumpy for nationalistic reasons is the height of parochialism, Britain wanted to export to Europe, and Europe wanted to export to the rest of the world. So from Britain's point of view if Europe have only one standard it makes things easy, if on the other hand Britain needs to deal with the previous one hundred years and choosing another standard for themselves doesn't mean they are throwing the rattle out of the pram, ships, trains, weaving machines, boilers, etc. have a long life and need integrating and servicing.

[Anbaric]

National rivalry does seem to have been an unfortunate feature of these meetings; they were, after all, held midway between the Franco-Prussian War and the Great War. By their own account, the British representatives were disappointed that the Germans had not turned up in Paris, and had hoped for better in neutral Brussels, but the situation was little different.

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I doubt the choice of a particular Whitworth size for the tripod screw was viewed negatively, especially if (as it seems) the PSGB/RPS had not specified which of the four standard screws should be used for this purpose. It would have been more problematic if a similar screw with a different thread pitch or a metric size had been selected, which could lead to damage or more subtle incompatibilities (as we still see with 43mm filters made to different thread pitch standards). But this was in any case only one of many standards that were discussed - in important areas like plate sizes and lens screw standards, the British did not get their own way.

In most of the agreed standards, the metric system was adopted, a decision the senior British representative regarded as short-sighted, since he felt that English units would ultimately prevail over this 'French' system.

When a microscope manufacturer from Wetzlar decided to try their luck with a camera system, they would of course specify a lens mount with a metric 39mm diameter. But they would also use their industry-standard tooling to give it a non-metric Whitworth thread, the standard established by the Royal Microscopical Society.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Anbaric

[Roland Zwiers]

The Victorian era had a great capacity for integrating 'old' systems with new systems to keep the wheels kept turning, and the country with most 'old' systems through trial and error was Britain.

National rivalry does seem to have been an unfortunate feature of these meetings

This subject is more and more interesting.

A Dutch historian, Jan Romein, formulated the law of the handicap of a head start, or first-mover disadvantage.
This theory suggests that an initial head start in a given area may result in a handicap in the long term.
In my opinion this applies to late Victorian Britain.
A lot of old systems kept turning, but were increasingly inefficient.
Newly industrialising countries like Germany and the USA bought the latest systems in the UK or simply copied the latest technology.
They were not burdened by an inheritance of older technologies or outdated machinery.

When it comes to cameras one can say that the Kine Exakta of 1936 originally had a first mover advantage.
After the war it was already 10 year old, but it was still the leading single lens reflex.
So new technologies could retraoactively be applied: the interchangeable pentaprism, retrofocus wide-angle lenses, lenses with automatic apertures.

Around 1955 the Exakta Varex still was a very competitive camera.
But then the law of the first mover disadvantage started to apply.
German (Praktina) and Japanese competitors (Nikon F) copied the concept.
They were able to design the system from scratch,
not burdened by choices that Karl Nüchterlein had to make in 1936.  

In a similar way late 19th century Britain increasingly became less competitive compared with Germany and the USA.
British workers had to operate a combination of modern and outdated machinery.
In addition, for some hard-to-understand reason, British entrepreneurs became less innovative.
One exception is the Cooke triplet of the 1890s.
 

Another exception is the Vest Pocket Ensignette of 1909.
Kodak countered with the 1912 VP Kodak.
And how German inventors took the lead is the reason for this Forum.

Roland

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Roland Zwiers]

The Victorian era had a great capacity for integrating 'old' systems with new systems to keep the wheels kept turning, and the country with most 'old' systems through trial and error was Britain.

National rivalry does seem to have been an unfortunate feature of these meetings

This subject is more and more interesting.

A Dutch historian, Jan Romein, formulated the law of the handicap of a head start, or first-mover disadvantage.
This theory suggests that an initial head start in a given area may result in a handicap in the long term.
In my opinion this applies to late Victorian Britain.
A lot of old systems kept turning, but were increasingly inefficient.
Newly industrialising countries like Germany and the USA bought the latest systems in the UK or simply copied the latest technology.
They were not burdened by an inheritance of older technologies or outdated machinery.

When it comes to cameras one can say that the Kine Exakta of 1936 originally had a first mover advantage.
After the war it was already 10 year old, but it was still the leading single lens reflex.
So new technologies could retraoactively be applied: the interchangeable pentaprism, retrofocus wide-angle lenses, lenses with automatic apertures.

Around 1955 the Exakta Varex still was a very competitive camera.
But then the law of the first mover disadvantage started to apply.
German (Praktina) and Japanese competitors (Nikon F) copied the concept.
They were able to design the system from scratch,
not burdened by choices that Karl Nüchterlein had to make in 1936.  

In a similar way late 19th century Britain increasingly became less competitive compared with Germany and the USA.
British workers had to operate a combination of modern and outdated machinery.
In addition, for some hard-to-understand reason, British entrepreneurs became less innovative.
One exception is the Cooke triplet of the 1890s.
 

Another exception is the Vest Pocket Ensignette of 1909.
Kodak countered with the 1912 VP Kodak.
And how German inventors took the lead is the reason for this Forum.

Roland

 

 

 

 

 

The Victorian era had a great capacity for integrating 'old' systems with new systems to keep the wheels kept turning, and the country with most 'old' systems through trial and error was Britain.

National rivalry does seem to have been an unfortunate feature of these meetings

This subject is more and more interesting.

A Dutch historian, Jan Romein, formulated the law of the handicap of a head start, or first-mover disadvantage.
This theory suggests that an initial head start in a given area may result in a handicap in the long term.
In my opinion this applies to late Victorian Britain.
A lot of old systems kept turning, but were increasingly inefficient.
Newly industrialising countries like Germany and the USA bought the latest systems in the UK or simply copied the latest technology.
They were not burdened by an inheritance of older technologies or outdated machinery.

When it comes to cameras one can say that the Kine Exakta of 1936 originally had a first mover advantage.
After the war it was already 10 year old, but it was still the leading single lens reflex.
So new technologies could retraoactively be applied: the interchangeable pentaprism, retrofocus wide-angle lenses, lenses with automatic apertures.

Around 1955 the Exakta Varex still was a very competitive camera.
But then the law of the first mover disadvantage started to apply.
German (Praktina) and Japanese competitors (Nikon F) copied the concept.
They were able to design the system from scratch,
not burdened by choices that Karl Nüchterlein had to make in 1936.  

In a similar way late 19th century Britain increasingly became less competitive compared with Germany and the USA.
British workers had to operate a combination of modern and outdated machinery.
In addition, for some hard-to-understand reason, British entrepreneurs became less innovative.
One exception is the Cooke triplet of the 1890s.
 

Another exception is the Vest Pocket Ensignette of 1909.
Kodak countered with the 1912 VP Kodak.
And how German inventors took the lead is the reason for this Forum.

Roland

 

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Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[250swb]

Given the continued tone of your comments I can see you have a nationalistic anti British (at best) stance and don't want to continue in a discussion with you. But I won't go quietly so I'll just mention top of the list of the things the Netherlands is famous for is cheese.

Edited June 30, 2023 by 250swb