Were Lenses From 1850 Sized For Copal 3?

[Richard K.]

Received a beautiful E. Anthony achromat today and was delighted to see that the flange thread EXACTLY fit the #3 opening of a Sinar board I had, allowing me to attach the lens securely by screwing the flange on from the other side of the board (no drill and tap this time!). Does this happen often? The lens looks great in black! I have a couple of questions and then 3 photos follow.

1.) Should I blacken the flange?

2.) Is there a way of dating the lens more precisely? Since it is an E Anthony rather than E & HT Anthony, this puts it before 1860, no? But is it 1840s or 1850s?

3.) I focussed at infinity (the house across the street) onto my living room wall and measured flange to wall distance of 14" to give me the approximate focal length. If the diameter of the litttle opening on top of the pill box is 0.75" and the inner diameter of the barrel with the cap removed is 2.25", I make those to be f-stops around f/19 and wide open f/6.3. Is my arithmetic OK?

4.) I never expected to see such clear glass in a lens that's 160+ years old - is that common?


http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn15/RichardK47/EAnthony1.jpg

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn15/RichardK47/EAnthony3.jpg

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn15/RichardK47/EAnthony2.jpg

[goamules]

Looks like a good one. I'll look in my Anthony book in a few hours and see if I can pin a date. If I recall, they offered CC Harrison for the portrait lenses during their earliest period, but I don't know about landscapes...let me look. I don't believe they made their own.

[eddie]

the flange looks okay. i use black tape when i feel the need. so i can get it off. magic marker works as well.

your math is correct. about f19. wide open without the front piece will give you great effects as well. you may want to remove the glass so it does not vignette as much.

eddie

[Mark Woods]

Sweet.

[Steven Tribe]

If I remember correctly, this one has the impressed E over A, imitating the Darlot early trademark - this should help with a date.
This is an objective from long before the glass revolution of the late 1880's so makers were very experienced with the properties of simple crown and flint glass which had been used in telescopes for decades before 1840's . There are quite a few lesser succesful concoctions of newly developed glass in the 1890's which didn't stand up to aging and the elements. Yesterday I separated a rather sad element from an aplanat - now its clean and the two halves look like new and sparkle. Made with old glass perhaps?

[Richard K.]

........you may want to remove the glass so it does not vignette as much.

eddie

Sincerely. huh?:)

[goamules]

OK, I got my book out. Anthony was the sole distributor of Dallmeyers, after the early offerings from Harrison. In 1869 they began importing Darlots, as a cheaper alternative. These were marked with the EA logo, as Steven mentions above.

Your lens was called the EA View lens, and was made at least as late as 1899, here is a catalog page from that year. So from 1870 - 1900 if it has the EA mark. Interestingly, the earlier catalogs actually recommended the Dallmeyers over the EAs, if you could afford them.

[Steven Tribe]

I thought it looked exactly like the Darlots of the period. I suppose they couldn't use the Darlot mark as B.French probably had a monopoly of import of named objectives. So the EA mark continued even after the company had changed its name?

[goamules]

Yes, Edward Anthony went to Europe to find another supplier to make lenses for his company, after Scoville bought the Harrison factory after the Civil War. Although by that time Anthony was already the sole agent for Dallmeyers in the US, he wanted another line.

Here is an ad from 1869 explaining the new EA mark. I believe portrait lenses were first, then view lenses like the original post.

[Brian Ellis]

Just as an aside, when I was setting the infinity stops on a Linhof Technika I was told - I think by Martin at Marflex but I'm not sure - that I needed to focus on something about a mile away to be at infinity. If this is correct (and if it did in fact come from Martin I feel confident it is) then it's unlikely you were actually at infinity when you focused on the house across the street. Then again I have no clue what I'm talking about, I'm just passing information along from some forgotten source, so take it FWIW.

[Richard K.]

Close enough, I hope!:cool:

I would think that that would put me within 1/2" of true focal length? Anybody?:)

[Brian Stein]

Brian is correct about the need to focus on a genuinely distant object (I am lucky enough to have a small peak about 5 miles away with a large tower on top that does just the job). Your not-so-distant infinity *probably* is within 1/2", but why not play more with it using a really distant object? [We all know you want to...... ;-)]