Trying to identify this maker's mark on an old brass lens

[jhogan]

Please see snapshots.





Any ideas?

Thanks for your help.

[cowanw]

Taylor, Taylor and Hobson (cooke)
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/coch...oke30.jpg.html

[Mark Sawyer]

Yup, TT&H, as Bill said. Looks like one of their early Rapid Rectilinears.

[Steven Tribe]

T,T & H were bulk suppliers to the trade and the general public of brass flanges, so a TTH trademark on the flange means nothing about the identity of the lens it is attached to - especialy in 2015!

I have seen a number of french flanges with AT (not AD!) stamped on them - but never could find out the source.

[goamules]

I don't agree. A TTH trademark is a certain, surefire way to identify the lens.

TTH had a patented flange, with course threads, that won't get cross threaded. Their steep pitch would allow a lens to be screwed on with a minimum number of turns. Nothing else will screw into a TTH flange, but a TTH lens. If it did, it would be breaking their patent.

To JBHogan, you should be able to unscrew the lens easily, and check. If the threads look like this, it's a TTH lens. In the remote chance someone glued or otherwise cross threaded another maker's lens into a TTH flange, then you won't see the matching thread on the lens. But if they match up, and it takes exactly 3 revolutions to screw/unscrew, it's a Taylor Hobson.

[Mark Sawyer]

Garrett's right on this one. All the TT&H/Cooke LF lenses mounted with the same course thread pitch, 13 per inch, (by comparison, Leica threads are 26 per inch). Almost impossible to cross-thread, and that predictable three-revolutions-to-remove is nice! TT&H also machined the start of the thread, something I've never seen another manufacturer do. TT&H design and quality is remarkable.

[IanG]

T,T & H were bulk suppliers to the trade and the general public of brass flanges, so a TTH trademark on the flange means nothing about the identity of the lens it is attached to - especialy in 2015!

Were they? They did sell spare flanges for their own lenses but their adverts don't suggest they fit other make lenses.

Ian

[Steven Tribe]

I agree about TT&H's patent "abrupt start" thread - I have an identical one. But this is not something that they produced from day 1 or to the exclusion of the usual "gradual start" thread. Will check some more lenses/flanges!

[goamules]

Steven, Taylor and Taylor started in 1886, then Hobson joined in 1887. In 1893 they patented their flange thread, British patent no. 3019.



The early TTH flanges where just engraved with initials, not the stylized logo shown in the original posting. That came later, i'm not going to look it up, but about 1920s or so.

Their patented thread was a big selling point, and mentioned in a lot of their advertisements and the photography journals of the day. If they sold spare flanges....they were for TTH lenses that were missing the flange.

Here it is discussed in a 1915 journal