I am trying to date various old wooden contact printers. I know that by the company names (such as Scoville, etc) that these had to be at the early part of the century.They had the early type cords and porcelain sockets. If you have any info on any of them or know where to look for info on them, it would be greatly appreciated. I would also like to know about the actual usage of these items - are they for strickly rollfilm or wet or dry plates, etc?

-- tom saffioti (aujb51a@prodigy.com), October 28, 1999

Answers

From what I have understood, they were (and are) used for print out processes where negatives (usually a plate in the old days, and sheet film today) are usually contact-printed. For more information on the early processes (not on dating the frames, I am afraid, but something on their use) see William Crawford's "The Keepers of Light - A History and Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes"

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), October 29, 1999.

I have a Kodak Amateur Printer that I use to contact print 4 x 5 negatives. It is a wooden box with a glass top that will take up to a 5 x 7 neg. It has sliding metal masking bands. The pressure pad is hinged, two-piece type that turns on the white exposing light when it is closed and latched. There is also a safelight socket inside for a red lamp. Works fine and I think I spend $15 for it.

When I worked in the darkroom for a camera shop, we used to make Christmas cards on a large contact printer. We had a film mask with the greeting, and a clear window for the customer's negative of the family.

In the Navy we used one that had a 10" x 20" glass top and a big inflatable rubber bag for the pressure unit for printing aerial film. It had two big spools for winding the film to the next frame. It had a number of argon filled exposing lamps arranged in a grid pattern that could be individually switched to provide dodging. Quite the unit.

When I worked for a commercial photographer we made our own contact printer to take the 8 x 10 color negatives they shot. We used a bullet type Kodak safelight about 3 feet below the glass with a slide-out drawer for 6" color printing filters. I could put out 50 -- 70 prints per day on it when everything went right. Lots of fun.

-- Tony Brent (ajbrent@mich.com), October 29, 1999.