A camera that was used in the Manhattan Project (Atomic Bomb Drop on Nagasaki)

Now allow me to steer away from the historical/political aspect and let's talk photography with this monster of a camera.

While driving along Escambia Bay to pick up my daughter from school, I was thinking about the way this camera may have been used to take photos.

I don't see any shutter release or shutter anywhere.
I don't see any shutter speed settings.

There is a knob for changing apertures, though.

I think that this camera may have been used this way:

There was a motorized film advance mechanism attached to it when used on an airplane. The film speed was fixed to one speed and the focus always set to infinity.

The fast lens speed allowed flexibility in setting many aperture values with one fixed shutter speed. Maybe the film advance regulated that one fixed shutter speed.

Since the lens was always set to infinity, the different aperture setting were useless for DOF settings. It had to be to balance different exposure situations by changing thre aperture.

This is my initial guess. I could very well be wrong here.
Who has other suggestions on how the camera may have worked?
 
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Trivision does not stand for a TV camera. As for APEL, I think that it has little to do with a library.

I had all this information posted in my initial thread on the camera. In this thread, I was not asking for input on finding out which camera it was; just the opposite. I was informing you what Winnek's daughter has written me.
 
TRIVISION Camera at the Navy was not a TV camera, Fred.


Time/CNN have this on trivision camera:
date:Monday, Jan. 13, 1947
In the plushier Victorian parlors, the stereoscope had been a favorite gadget. Viewed through its wooden lorgnette-style holder, special, double photographs looked solidly three-dimensional, and entertained the young & old on dull Sunday afternoons. Last week the Navy announced that it was perfecting an improvement: a single photograph which appears three-dimensional without benefit of "viewer."

Objects looked at directly seem three-dimensional because each of the two human eyes sees a slightly different picture. The stereoscope, with its two pictures taken from different angles, copies this principle.

Six years ago the Navy picked up an idea which Inventor Douglas F. Winnek had been working on since 1932. Winnek uses a camera with a lens wider than the distance between the human eyes, and takes his pictures on a special film covered with tiny, transparent ridges. These act somewhat like lenses.

Light which reaches them through one edge of the camera lens makes a dot-&-dash picture on the sensitive emulsion behind the ridges. Light passing through the opposite edge of the lens makes a slightly different picture. When the negative is looked at with both human eyes, it seems to be three-dimensional. Each eye, being in a slightly different position in relation to the lenslike ridges, sees a different picture. The two pictures, combining, give the appearance of depth.

The "trivision" negatives (as the Navy calls them) are reversed, the foreground appearing to be the background. But printed on special "trivision paper" they are startlingly lifelike. The process is not yet ready for demonstration. But Inventor Winnek and the Navy hope to adapt it to colored lithography and to movies, so that human beings on paper or screen will be almost warm with life.
 
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[FONT=arial,helvetica]The Aeronautical Instruments Laboratory (AIL), and the Aeronautical Photographic Experimental Laboratory (APEL), were transferred to Johnsville in December 1953 from the Naval Air Material Center, Philadelphia. The Instruments Laboratory functions in research, development and test areas of aircraft, flight and engine instruments, automatic control and navigational equipments to provide the latest and best means of meeting varied combat or defense conditions. Current projects include development and test of helicopter automatic controls, of pilots dead reckoning position indicator and experimental instrument panels for jet aircraft. The Photographic Laboratory conducts research in the development of aerial and airborne photographic equipments and auxiliary components. A recent project involved miniaturization of optics used in photographic systems for future aircraft ensuring complete dependability and mission accomplishment in photographic reconnaissance. [/FONT]
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from: http://www.navairdevcen.org/nadchistory1.html
 
cosmonot said:
from: http://www.navairdevcen.org/nadchistory1.html
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A.P.E.L. does not stand for Allied Publications Electronic Library, Fred.
It stands for Aeronautical Photographic Experimental Laboratory, which is more believable when it is for a camera.



Thank you, cosmonot. This is more believable to stand for APEL on a camera.
This certainly lifts the probability that this was not used for X-ray experiments but for aerial photography.

It seems that we are getting closer to the truth, whatever it may be.
I was already quite exited to have a Douglas Winnek 3D camera, but if it also has added historical value, then this would be even better.
 
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Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for the info.

My plea. Do not donate it to the Smithsonian. They have the largest camera collection in the US, and I don't know of a single piece that is on display. The holdings are not cataloged. The equipment is not available for public viewing. The place is a hardware mausoleum, not a museum.
 
Thanks again Raid for another interesting and wholly informative thread!

As an aside, I checked that link for the PBS show and saw this in my local listings for tomorrow night's show: http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetec...=28677&transport=&provider=&channelsuppress=f

I doubt very seriously they would be running with your question this quickly, but I'll be sure to watch tomorrow night to see.

DOH! It's sunday night and it's on their HD channel instead. I reckon I'll do my usual NON-tv watching instead Sunday night.
 
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raid said:
Thank you, cosmonot. This is more believable to stand for APEL on a camera.
This certainly lifts the probability that this was not used for X-ray experiments but for aerial photography.
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It depends. APEL could have been using such cameras for inspection of parts removed from flight test service, recording instruments during a test, wind tunnel research, or any number of purposes. I would not discount any of those possibilities until I learned more about what APEL was doing in Philadelphia.

The only certainty is that article is from an unknown author, and the APEL acronym has been reassigned to a different organization within today's Navy.
 
cosmonot said:
It depends. APEL could have been using such cameras for inspection of parts removed from flight test service, recording instruments during a test, wind tunnel research, or any number of purposes. I would not discount any of those possibilities until I learned more about what APEL was doing in Philadelphia.

The only certainty is that article is from an unknown author, and the APEL acronym has been reassigned to a different organization within today's Navy.
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This is quite a possibility. I will focus on APEL for a while.
 
What a find. I've been fascinated by the atomic-related hardware of that period for years, ever since I read Leslie Groves' book in 1968. To have a piece of photographic hardware that was directly involved in the Project is wonderful and I congratulate you on it.
I agree with Zeitz - not to dismiss the Smithsonian out of hand, but it battles against lack of resources and simply has too much stuff to show it all - it's the same this side of the pond. Many of the large museums keep at least 90% of their collections in storage, and sometimes very bad storage, with the resullt that many irreplaceable items are permanently damaged.
I would look seriously at placing /selling the camera with a specialised museum that will have the space and resources to show it off on permanent display.
Once again - great find and I hope you find a suitable place for it.
 
I received today an email from the Director of the 3D Center of Art & Photography, located in Portland, OR. He offered to have the Center house the camera.

He added that they are the only museum and gallery devoted to 3D in the US. In addition to a permanent collection of equipment, images, and stereoscopic archives, they have rotating print and digital exhibitions of the work of contemporary stereographers.

link: https://argomail.uwf.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://3dcenter.us
 
i wonder if there are airmen still around who might have used these cameras?

raid, have you thought of contacting some veteran's groups to see if there are any ex-photogs still around who may have used these cameras?

- chris
 
Chris,

By having me live in Pensacola, you would think that such a task would be easy. I have not known that this camera might be important in the past, so this is new to me. I may ask around after the hurricanes pass by.
 
zeitz said:
Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for the info.

My plea. Do not donate it to the Smithsonian. They have the largest camera collection in the US, and I don't know of a single piece that is on display. The holdings are not cataloged. The equipment is not available for public viewing. The place is a hardware mausoleum, not a museum.
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This is a good point. No need to have the camera put in some storage room for nobody to see.
 
Here are photos of the 14 inch 2.2 lens. It is housed in a block, as you can see. It is a very heavy lens.

I have taken photos of one of the other two lenses that I have.It is a 14inch 2.2 lens that is housed in a block and that is very heavy. I could barely lift it off the ground.

http://photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=549733

I have another identical lens, plus something that is either an extender or a doubler.
 
So we know that it is a genuine Winnek invention. That is good. Thanks.
How did you find it?
 
Fred,
If the patent claim was filed in 1947, is there a chance that the camera was used by before that timein WWII?
 
I am aware of mathematical proofs in quality control that the allies kept unpublished until the late 1940's.

I guess, we have to somehow get access to the diary somehow.
 
I finally wrote Winnek's daughter an email, asking her to let me call her about the camera. I hope that she will respond positively.
 
Avotius said:
Very interesting piece of history even if it is connected with one of the biggest mistakes ever. Imagine that call...."kokura is covered in fog, we can see anything." other side of the line replies "ok whats the next city on the list?" not a good day.
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No! the biggest mistake was Japan attacking Pearl Harbor. If Japan would of stayed home, then the bomb never would have been dropped, & Raid wouldn't have his camera, & we wouldn't be reading this thread.
 
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