Accession No
2170
Brief Description
Hill’s cloud camera, by R. and J. Beck Ltd., English, c. 1930
Origin
England; London
Maker
R. and J. Beck Ltd. [lens]
Class
optical
Earliest Date
1920
Latest Date
1940
Inscription Date
Material
metal (brass, oxidised brass); wood; glass; hide (leather); cloth (velvet); ivory
Dimensions
length 145mm; breadth 146mm; depth 62mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Transferred from Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, 05/1969.
Inscription
‘HILL’S CLOUD CAMERA 180˚
PAT NO 31931/23’ (lens)
‘R & J
BECK
LTD
LONDON’ (lens)
Description Notes
Hill’s cloud camera, by Robin Hill and R & J Beck, English, c. 1930.
Square wooden lens box with circular brass lens holder at front. The lens is a fish-eye type and it can be set for apertures of 16, 22 and 32. Also settings marked ‘K’, ‘A’ and ‘F’. The box is open at the back for the admission of the plates. There are two wooden plate holders for two glass plates; numbered in ivory 1 - 4.
Leather lens cap lined with velvet.
Condition good; complete
References
Events
Description
The cloud camera was invented in the 1920s by the Cambridge plant biochemist Robin Hill. Hill’s interest in meteorology led him to develop a camera with a timer and ‘fish-eye’ lens capable of taking whole-sky photographs for surveying cloud forms and other atmospheric effects. In the 1950s Hill lent one of his prototype cameras to two colleagues in the Cambridge University Botany School, G. C. Evans and D. E. Coombe, who used it to make pioneering records of light penetration through the tree canopy of forests. Evans and Coombe’s technique was so popular that the instrument maker R. & J. Beck began to produce a commercial version of Hill’s camera, and the use of “hemispherical photography” persists to this day in the fields of ecology and forestry.
15/10/2014
Created by: Joshua Nall on 15/10/2014
FM:41366
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