Secret camera

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A secret camera or detective camera is the name given to a type of handheld camera from the mid- 19th century that still worked with photographic plates but did not require a tripod . They were light, particularly compact and outwardly inconspicuous, so that snapshots could be taken quickly and almost unnoticed .

variants

Advertisement for a secret camera from 1890
Spy camera for night photography, equipped with a flash with infrared filter, used by the former secret service of Czechoslovakia at an exhibition in Moscow in 2003

Secret cameras were constructed in many variants as book camera (z. B. from George Lowdon ,) or opera glasses camera (z. B. Jules Carpentier's Photo Jumelle to 1890 ) and disguised as a monocular , handle of a walking stick ( "Ben Akiba", ca. 1903 )

history

Well-known manufacturers of detective and secret cameras were, for example, A. Stegemann , Berlin, RD Gray , New York ("Stirns", 1885 ), E. Kronke and A. Lehmann ("Ben Akiba", approx. 1903 ), George Lowdon (book cameras , around 1887 ), Dr. R. Krügener's pocket book camera , Frankfurt 1888, Vega SA , Geneva ("Vega", 1900 ), Jules Carpentier (opera glass camera "Photo Jumelle", around 1890 ), Wünsche Reick , Mader Isny , Wanaus , Vienna, Goldmann , Vienna, Walter Talbot ( "Invisible Camera" for 35mm film ), Berlin and the Eastman Dry Plate Company , whose first camera was The Eastman Detective Camera from 1886 .

As a precursor and partly contemporaries of secret cameras are travel , miniature , reporter and folding cameras which, as the successor box cameras and today Minox - miniature cameras .

The spy cameras of the 20th century are closely related to the secret cameras . Colloquially, voyeuristic webcams are often referred to as "secret cameras".

See also

literature

  • Eaton S. Lothrop Jr. and Michel Auer: The secret cameras and their adventurous history . Seebruck: Heering 1978
  • Hanno Sowade; Foundation House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany (Ed.): June 17, 1953 in focus . Bonn: Foundation House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2003. ISBN 3-937086-01-3

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudolph Stirn: Photographische Wissens-Camera , in: Yearbook for Photography and Reproduction Technology for the year 1888, 2nd year, Wilhelm Knapp, Halle / S. 1888, pp. 402f.

Web links

Wikisource: Yearbook for Photography and Reproduction Technology  - Sources and full texts