724   Very rare walking stick camera ‘Ben Akiba’. Emil Kronke (patent) for A. Lehmann, Berlin. Around 1903.

Emil Kronke 19./20. Jh.
Alfred (?) Lehmann 19./20. Jh.

Silver-plated and chiselled brass, beech stock, stained red-brown, lacquer-polished. Lens, probably 1:9 / 35 mm, on the ...
front end wall of the handle, behind a hinged flap. Shooting format 13 x 25 mm on roll film. Two holders for the film spool and three spare spools in the handle. With three spools, one labelled "SYSTEM-KRONKE – D.R.G.M.". Case no. "704".
Provenance: Saxon private property since the 1950s; formerly private Dresden property (born 1902).
Comparable walking stick cameras are preserved in:
Deutsches Museum, Munich, InvNo. 63206.
Swiss Camera Museum, Vevey.

When gelatine drying plates were invented around 1880, this made it possible to produce cameras that were so small that they could be built into everyday objects. Cameras with roll film found their place in watches, hats and even walking sticks. In the "Ben Akiba' walking stick designed by Emil Kronke and patented in Germany in 1903, the "camera lens is located on the front end wall of the handle behind a flap. The shutter is released by pulling a button underneath. The wound film is placed on the frontmost of the four reels housed in the handle and fed via a film platform to the take-up reel in the hollow space in the neck of the walking stick, which is operated from the outside via a rotating spindle. Spare rolls of film are carried on the other three spools in the handle." (quoted from https://digital.deutsches-museum.de/item/63206).

Lit.: Cornelia Kemp, Dorothea Peters, Steffen Siegel: Foto und Film. Die Technik der Bilder. Munich 2017, p. 171.

Theodor Conzelmann: Neugestaltung der Abteilung "Photographie" im deutschen Museum. In: Zeitschrift für angewandte Photographie in Wissenschaft und Technik. Leipzig 1939, p. 67, fig. 5.

Michel Auer: Kameras – gestern und heute. Lausanne 1975. p. 84.
Eaton S. Lothrop: A century of cameras: from the colection of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House. New York 1973. p. 102. > Read more

Silver plating partially rubbed, case with occasional, inconspicuous deformations. Lens coating partially detached / blinded on one side. Shot and ferrule with pressure and scratch marks, inconspicuous overall impression.

L. 88,5 cm.