ANTIQUE c1920 Wood & Brass WILLIAMSON 35mm Hand Crank Tropical MOVIE CAMERA

Description

ANTIQUE c1920 MAHOGANY WOOD &
BRASS BRITISH MADE WILLIAMSON
35mm HAND CRANK TROPICAL
MOVIE CAMERA - w/ "DIRECTOR'S"
VIEWING PRISM ASSEMBLY
The brass bound reinforced TROPICAL BODIED camera on offer devised by
JAMES WILLIAMSON is hand made and it is NOT one of the more common
production models cranked out later by WILLIAMSON such as the various
hand crank TYPE 1-4 "COLONIAL" MODELS or the cloth covered compact
"ENSIGN" newsreel cameras.
The camera is in excellent general running order and cranks smoothly. The
brass and wood finishes are both very good and all original.
The WILLIAMSON camera on offer is a very complex model that was hand made by the WILLIAMSON KINEMATOGRAPH CO. LTD. of LONDON that features an unusual removeable "DIRECTOR'S" viewing port on the side of the camera that incorporates a prism that allows a second operator of "DIRECTOR" to view through the lens as the camera is in function, and as the cameraman is cranking the hand crank. Obviously, if removed, the glass viewing window would need to be blacked out with tape
or affixed black paper.
The camera comes with THREE (3) brass mattes and also a threaded tripod head thumbscrew - PLUS a lateral / vertical crank for adjusting the film frame left to right or up and down.
This camera carries THREE (3) key patent dates and numbers on the front all brass face plate - i.e  "21787 /08"; "6340 / 20";  "6341 / 20".
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As well the lens is a ZEISS patented "ROSS" 1:8 as shown, which is a top of the line lens of the day. A small ding to the rim is noted - see photos.  This does NOT affect the functionablity of the lens, which works smoothly.  This is a very valuable cine lens unto its own.  It is perfectly clear as well and the iris works fine.
WOOD BODY MEASURES 5 1/2" x 12 1/2" x 15 1/2" in size.
Over-all dimensions with main crank in place is 16" TALL x
8 3/4" WIDE x 15" LONG
The top FIRST DIAL reads on its face: "PICTURES PER SECOND".
The SECOND DIAL appears to be a footage or minutes counter -
with numbers engraved all around the brass dial face.
The lower of THREE (3) glassine covered dials on the rear face plate
lacks it works - but reads "IRIS OPEN" / "IRIS SHUT"
below the dial.  Below that there two BRASS push
buttons that have engraved the following:  "IRIS"  /
"SHUTTER" but do not seem to be connected
to the front shutter / lens assembly.
Below all of that is a HALF ROUND dial with increments
engraved into the backing plate and not within a glassine
covered DIAL as the three above - that looks like it is
not a dial but a adjustment point.  It it is engraved fom left
to right - "5" - "4.5" - "3" & "1".
Leather strap is a replacement.
Front brass camera nameplate for WILLIAMSON KINEMATOGRAPH CO., LTD. also bears "W. BUTCHER & SONS., Ltd" as SOLE DISTRIBUTORS
- and who were located at "CAMERA HOUSE, FARRINGDON AVENUE,
LONDON., E. C. 4"
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James A. Williamson (8 November 1855 – 18 August 1933) was a Scottish
photographer and a key member of the loose association of early film pioneers
dubbed the Brighton School by French film historian Georges Sadoul. He is
best known for The Big Swallow (1901), a trick film with innovative use of
extreme close-up, as well as Fire! and Stop Thief! (both 1901), dramas with
continuity established across multiple shots.
BIOGRAPHY
EARLY LIFE & CARRER
Williamson was born in Pathhead near Kirkcaldy, Fife, and raised in
Edinburgh, where he trained to be a master chemist. He moved to London
in 1868, where he was an apprentice to a pharmacist and to Eastry, Kent in
1877, where he bought his own pharmacy and got married. He was also a
keen amateur photographer who sold photographic apparatus and chemical
supplies in his shop and became an agent for Kodak.
In 1886, he moved his chemist's and photographic business to 144 Church
Road, Hove,where he took up residence with his family, and formed friendships
with fellow pioneers Esmé Collings, William Friese-Greene and George
Albert Smith, among others, for whom he supplied chemicals and processed
films. The property, previously owned by the photographer S. Grey of Well &
Grey, was later renumbered 156 Church Road and currently bears a
commemorative plaque to Williamson's achievements unveiled as part
of the centenary of cinema celebrations in 1996.
Williamson, who initially purchased and adapted an apparatus for local
showings of Smith's films,  was, with assistance from the engineer Alfred Darling,
able to create his own home-made filming apparatus and begin making films,
including the actuality Devil's Dyke Fun Fair,[6] in time for inclusion in the Hove Camera Club's annual exhibition in November 1896, and again in November 1897.  At the same time he introduced x-ray photography to the region.
PRODUCTION AT WESTERN ROAD
In 1898, he moved his chemist's and photographic business to 55 Western
Road, Hove, where he and his family took up residence, and issued his first
catalogue, which was expanded that year to include, among others, trick film
The Clown Barber and comedy Washing the Sweep. These were later
distributed by the Warwick Trading Company under the directorship of
Charles Urban.
Williamson's Popular Entertainments, a Saturday night showing of his films,
ran for five weeks from January to February 1900 and for a further four weeks
from November to December at the Hove Town Hall. The latter series featured
the premiere of Williamson's innovative Attack on a China Mission, which
included a four shots that developed the narrative and a reverse-angle cut
giving the audience an alternate perspective, as well as winter sports scenes
filmed in Switzerland by mountaineer and traveller Aubrey Le Blond,
described as the first identifiable female filmmaker.
Williamson, as shown by the 1901 census in which he is described as a
chemist & druggist but engaged in photography only, had entered a period
of dedicated film-making during which he produced trick film The Big
Swallow, with its innovative use of extreme close-up, as well as dramas
Fire! and Stop Thief!, with their use of action continuity across multiple
shots which established the basic grammar of film.The following year
these films became available in the US where they are said to have
influenced Edwin Porter's Life of an American Fireman and The Great
Train Robbery (both 1903).
PRODUCTION AT CAMBRIDGE GROVE
In 1902, he moved his business, now named the Williamson Kinematographic
Company, to a new location at Cambridge Grove off Wilbury Villas, Hove,
where he and his family took up residence at Rose Cottage and a glasshouse
film studio and a photographic atelier, designed by W.B. Sheppard, were
constructed to house production and processing of such important works as,
The Little Match Seller as well as The Soldier's Return and A Reservist,
Before the War, and After the War, which pioneered the use of film to
promote social issues, prefiguring the genre of Social Realism. That
summer he also filmed the procession and rehearsal procession for the
coronation of King Edward VII.
Williamson Kinematographic Company began a period of expansion in 1907
opening new offices in London and in New York, under Williamson's son Alan.
Williamson himself, like fellow pioneer Robert W. Paul, had become disillusioned with the increasingly industrialised nature of the business and left production first to Jack Chart and later to David Aylott, while he concentrated on film processing and distribution, as well as working with his son Colin, an engineer, on a new venture manufacturing and selling equipment. The following year, as part of this new venture, he invented a device which allowed exhibitors to make their own intertitles.Williamson, along with Charles Urban and other filmmakers, also attended the 1909 European Convention of Film Producers and Publishers in Paris, intended to combat the threat from the foundation of the Motion Picture Patents Company in the US, shortly before shutting down the film production and exhibition arms of his business.
LATER LIFE
In 1910, following the production of his final film, The History of a Butterfly:
A Romance of Insect Life, announced as the first of an unrealised series of
innovative informational films on science and nature subjects,Williamson and his family moved to London, and his premises at Cambridge Grove were sold Charles Urban's Natural Color Kinematograph Company. That year he also patented a projector which inserted title slides into projected films.  Williamson briefly returned to production in 1913 with a newsreel service which closed down shortly after the outbreak of World War I.
By this time Williamson Kinematographic Company assets included a processing plant in Barnet and a factory in Willesden, where the famous Williamson's 'Topical' cameras along with a variety of other apparatus widely used in the British film industry of the time were manufactured. During the war the company pioneered the development of aerial photography, producing gun-mounted reconnaissance cameras to photograph aerial battles. It also created an innovative photogrammetry camera for scientific and military use and a photo-finish camera for horse-racing.
On 18 August 1933, Williamson died at his home in Richmond, Surrey of a heart attack.
LEGACY
The Williamson Kinematograph Company continued to make a range of cameras, processing and printing equipment and continued its pioneering work in aerial reconnaissance during the World War II.
In 1996, as part of the celebration of the centenary of film, the work of Williamson and the other Brighton pioneers was commemorated by the unveiling of plaques, including one on Williamson's former premises in Church Street, an exhibition held at the University of Brighton Gallery and Hove Museum and the publication of Hove Pioneers and the Arrival of Cinema by John Barnes, Ine van Dooren and Frank Gray.
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Wear throughout consistent with age and use but overall displays nicely. Please see all photos as they are part of the description.
SOLD AS SHOWN ABOVE -
SOLD "AS IS."
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