Willard & Co. Lens circa. 1860

[Mark Lund]

Hello to all,
In recent travels in WNY I came across and purchased a large brass barrelled lens marked "Willard & Co. New York". From its design I guessed at the date of 1860. The Serial Number is 7384. I have contacted the George Eastman Houses' Curator of Technology, Mr. Gustavson, to which there is no mention of the Willard & Co. in their archives. I have tried in vain to Web crawl the name to which was found, John W. Willard, a Dealer of Daguerreotype/Photographic materials in New York between 1856-1882 and Willard lenses used in early Astronomy using telescopes.
A question then arose, was the lens made by a different manufacturer with a contract with Willard & Co. for lenses? Or was it a Patent "rip-off" to make a buck for the Willard & Co. coffers?
I have tested and photographed simple subject matter with the lens, my gut response is that it was made for Landscapes. The Focal length is approx. 9 inches. I have disassembled the rear air spaced doublet and the single front element and cleaned many years of grime off the glass. While doing this reassembled the rear element glasses in different configurations ( due to previous hands) to find the sharpest image circle. I have also replaced a velvet "gasket" on the rear internal body of the lens, there was pieces of "original" fabric there when first dissasembled. The lens is most impressive since it almost covers 8x10 with the subject 15 feet away, with the typical quick fall off from the center to edge of the groundglass.
I post this message in the hopes that someone knows of the Willard & Co. lens based in New York and can give some historic background on the maker(s) and lens design. There are images available of the lens if needed, please contact me for the images. Thank you.
Mark Lund
Rochester, NY

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

From your description, your lens is a Petzval type meant for portraiture (cemented doublet in front, air spaced doublet in rear). These were designed in 1840, and were in use until the 1920s. They were never patented, consequently there were quite a few manufacturers in the 19th century (Voigtländer, Darlot, Ross, and Dallmeyer were the main ones in Europe, while Harrison, and Homes Booth and Haydens made them in the US). I have never seen or heard of a Willard lens, so I suspect that they were probably a "house brand" made by a local optician.

If your lens really has a 9" FL (measured from the middle of the barrel) than was probably intended for 1/2 plates (4.25" x 5.5"), although I have a hard time believing that it would almost cover 8x10, since these lenses covered 45 degrees at most. What is the diameter of the front element? Usually, Petzvals are f/3.6, so it is a pretty easy thing to figure out the FL from the front element...

These still make wonderful portrait lenses, I use an 11" Dallmeyer for 5x7, and love it.

[Mike Phifer]

Petzval a professor of higher mathematics in Vienna designed two lenses. A portrait lens f/ 3.6 and a wide-angle objective of f/ 8.7 (which Kingslake describes as actually a telephoto since the rear component was of negative power, "A History of the Photographic Lens", 1989 Academic Press). Kingslake states that Petzval's lens designs were copied freely by every optition under the name German System. Petzval only held an Austrian Patent.

I have a list of Petzval lens designs that show a range of coverage from 20 f/2.2 to 60 degrees. Both the Gundach Portrait A f/5 and B f/4 covered 60 degrees (Handbook of Photography, 1939).

[richard_5189]

I have a cased ambrotype with Willard embroided felt interior. Did John W. Willard make cases for his images?

[Bart Fried]

Willard used at least one outside contractor to produce photographic portrait lenses of the Petzval form - a firm or maker named "Unser". The most notable of these was a lens that ended up in San Francisco. It was bought cheaply by Holden, director of Lick Observatory, for E. E. Barnard. The lens was refigured by the great American telescope maker, John A. Brashear, and Barnard used it for photographing the Milky Way, etc., etc. An internet search using the term "Crocker Telescope" and "Willard Lens" will get you a good deal of info on this lens.

[Bart Fried]

Further to that, the following has more on Usner (misspelled in the previous post) and Willard & Co.

"How the lens came to be used in Astronomical work on Mount Hamilton is described by professor Barnard in the introduction. The first experiments in astronomical work with an old fashioned portrait lens of the Petzval type were made by Dr. David Gill at the Cape of Good Hope on the great comet of 1882. In January, 1889, a 6-inch "Willard" lens was used by Wm. Ireland to photograph the total eclipse of the Sun, and its success then led to the purchase by Director Holden for the Lick Observatory, the funds being provided by the Hon. C. F. Crocker, Regent of the University of California. The information given shows that the lens was neither made by Willard nor is it 6-inches in aperture. Willard & Co., who have their name upon it were stock dealers only. The lens was made by Charles F. Usner in New York City. His name should not be forgotten, for it is doubtful if the lens makers of today can turn out an instrument greatly its superior.

It is true, however, that Brashear has refigured it, which doubtless adds to the sharpness of its images. The chief limitation of the original lens must have been the fact that the optical and visual foci coincided, as was necessary for focusing in the old wet-plate process. A modern instrument made exclusively for astronomical photography would have a better color correction and would give sharper images;"

PUBLICATIONS OF THE LICK OBSERVATORY, VOLUME XI: PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE MILKY WAY
AND OF COMETS: BY E. E. BARNARD: A REVIEW. By Joel H. Metcalf

[GGF]

My goodness these are very old messages. Will anybody see this post? I am doing research on early photography of the west and have a reference to WH Jackson using a Willard Lens. So it must have been used for landscape. Could a lens developed for portraiture be used for Landscape? did other photographers use such a lens? What effects would it have made on the images? GGF

[BarryS]

Willard & Co. were opticians that distributed lenses and photographic equipment--not manufacturers of lenses. They would have likely sold a full line of both portrait and landscape lenses. A Petzval Portrait lens wouldn't have been very suitable as a landscape lens for the large plates WHJ used. It would have to be huge to cover a large plate, and even then--the periphery of the image would be soft.

Most likely, the lens was a rapid rectilinear (aka aplanat) lens, which was developed in the 1860's. These lenses were much smaller, fairly sharp across the entire field, and low in linear distortion. They were also made in wide angle versions that would be much more useful for a landscape photographer.

[CCHarrison]

Willard was a reseller of other makers goods...

1867 and 1869 Willard ads attached

You may want to visit my site with early ads: http://antiquecameras.net/18481875advertisements.html


Dan

[goamules]

Willard & Co. were opticians that distributed lenses and photographic equipment--not manufacturers of lenses. They would have likely sold a full line of both portrait and landscape lenses. ...

Most likely, the lens was a rapid rectilinear (aka aplanat) lens, which was developed in the 1860's. These lenses were much smaller, fairly sharp across the entire field, and low in linear distortion. They were also made in wide angle versions that would be much more useful for a landscape photographer.

The only Willards I've ever seen are Petzvals. Come to think of it, I've never seen an RR/Aplant by hardly any early American portrait lens maker/reseller. Willard weren't really opticians either, if I recall, they just made the brasswork, or possibly got it from Holmes Booth Haydens or another brass manufacturer. Both of these used glass made by Usner, who was an optician. The only lenses I've ever seen from 1850s-1860s NY companies were radial drive Petzval pattern Portrait lenses, other than the CC Harrison Orthoscop and the Globe. But I may be forgetting something...

This Usner ad (not Willard) is from 1891 (in my notes...seems awfully late), and lists RRs though.