Accession No
5732
Brief Description
cloud camera, in box made by Cambridge University Botany School, by R. and J. Beck Ltd., English, c. 1960
Origin
England; London
Maker
R. and J. Beck Ltd.
Class
optical; natural history; meteorology
Earliest Date
1960
Latest Date
1963
Inscription Date
7-8-1965
Material
metal (brass, other); wood: glass; plastic (foam); cloth (velvet; hessian); hide (leather)
Dimensions
box: height 115mm; width 190mm; length 237mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Transferred from Plant Sciences Department, University of Cambridge on 29/01/1999. Invented by R.Hill.
Inscription
‘BECK/
LONDON
27280
MADE IN ENGLAND (stamped on top)
‘UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
BOTANY SCHOOL 00518’ (label stuck on front)
Description Notes
Cloud Camera, by Beck, English, c. 1960, in box made by Cambridge University Botany School.
The camera is made of black painted metal, it has a square base with unpainted guides to hold the plate in position and velvet strips to ensure darkness inside the camera. The base can screw into a tripod either at the side ot the bottom. The large lens points upwards and is protected by a leather and velvet cap. The picture can be taken though clear glass or one of 3 coloured filters labelled ‘F’, ‘A’ or ‘K’, the aperture altered from f8 to 32, and the exposure time from 1 sec to 1/250 (the timer badly overexposes) or may be governed by hand. The camera can be primed and shot electrically or manually, a flange preventing the photographer’s hands from impinging on the wide angle picture.
The camera comes complete with six cases for ?quarter plates, numbered in a variety of ways, sometimes with stick on labels including one from the Botany Dept. Melb. University dated in ink 7/8/65. Four of the cases are of one design, the other two are different from each other. Two of the plates have ‘16iv1963 CU Bot’ scratched into them.
Sturdy wooden box with brass handle and hinges and ?steel catches; divided on the inside into two unequal compartments and lined with a hessian backed foam which is badly damaged. the upper half of the larger compartment is unlined, but the box walls have old glue on them.
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:46104
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