Accession No
1635
Brief Description
cloud camera, by R. and J. Beck Ltd., English, c. 1930
Origin
England; London
Maker
R. and J. Beck Ltd.
Class
optical; meteorology; photography
Earliest Date
1925
Latest Date
1935
Inscription Date
Material
metal (brass, oxidised brass, white metal); wood; hide (leather); glass; cloth; paper (cardboard and one other)
Dimensions
camera length 210mm; breadth 147mm; depth 89mm; positives’ box length 151mm; breadth 100mm; thickness 31mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Donated by Ealing Beck Ltd., Watford, England, in 09/1974.
Inscription
‘R & J. BECK . LTD LONDON PATENT’ (lens mount)
Description Notes
Cloud camera with two plate glass positives.
White-painted wooden board carrying 180˚ field lens and electromagnet. Lens has six aperture stops at f8, f11, f14, d16, f18 and f22. Wooden plate holder on back of camera, behind lens, with cloth and leather cover. Screw mounts on back of camera for mounting on tripod.
Cardboard box containing envelopes with two glass positives, showing street around R & J Beck’s offices. The box is marked ‘2 1/4 plates glass’.
Condition fair
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:44577
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