The No. 1 Kodak was made from 1889 until 1895 and replaced the original Kodak of 1888. The most important difference was the new and simpler shutter. The original RNX shutter of the 1888 model consisted of a barrel that rotated around the lens, which was positioned inside the barrel. By pulling a string the spring in the shutter was wound. The stored energy was enough to take about 4 or 5 photos. After that the spring had to be tensioned again. Notice that the shutter was self capping, which was a great advantage in a snapshooters camera because the snapshooter did not have to remember to cap the shutter when cocking it. It did cost $ 3.10 to produce the RNX shutter, which was about 50 % of the total costs to produce the camera. To reduce costs a sector shutter was used in the No. 1 Kodak. The RNX shutter has 19 parts, while the sector shutter has only 10 parts. Assembling it was simpler and thus cheaper. Another reason to abandon the RNX shutter is the chance that the spring did not have enough energy left to rotate the barrel in the 6th exposure. The barrel stopped halfway resulting in a ruined exposure. As there was no indication how many photos had been taken on one winding of the spring, this was a great risk. The new sector shutter had to be cocked before every exposure, so there was no risk of running out of energy halfway the exposure.
A third reason could have been the wish to stop down the lens. The addition of a diaphragm mechanism was not possible with the lens inside the barrel shutter, but quite simple with the sector shutter.
See these shutters in action on my site.
All this I did not find out myself. It was published in an article by W.P. Carroll in "the Photographist" no. 34 of 1976, pages 10 and 11.
Also there is for sale a whole collection of 4.5 x 6 cm plate cameras. Asking price is euro 40,000. I do not know if this is a reasonable price, but if you want to have an instant collection, have a look at it.
Finally I want to present you my buddy from the 1960's. He, or is it 'she', is about 75 years old and did spend most of the time in clossets in my mother's home. My mother will be moving to a special home for the elderly soon, so I'm taking home the few things I left there. My 'teddy'-bear is one of these. Here s/he is. I swapped my bear for a football sometime in the early '60. I never liked footballs. He was my buddy in the next years, but disappeared into the cupboards when I grew up. Now I took him home. Maybe I will put some Brownie items around him, so s/he fits better into my collection.
