Vintage Kits

[Victor Samou Wong]

I was just wondering if any of the camera manufacturers in antiquity sold their cameras in self-assembly kits. By antiquity you can probably tell that I'm not asking about Bender. I'm curious about this because another of my hobbies is restoring vintage amplifiers and I'm aware that many of those from the 60's and earlier were DIY so I'm wondering if the same exists for cameras.

Cheers

[Ralph Barker]

I don't recall ever seeing DIY camera kits (until recently). On the electronic side, my recollection is that the kits were introduced by Heathkit, largely because there weren't too many home-oriented manufacturers at the time - HiFi was still pretty new back then.

[Ernest Purdum]

Very many years ago, mostly in England but in the U.S. as well, you could buy all the metal parts for a complete field or view camera either individually or as a package, the idea being that you would do the woodworking yourself. There must have been reasonable sales because they continued to be advertised for a long time.

I suspect, but don't know, that some of the smaller camera makers used the suppliers of these parts.