Euryscop II and Probable CC Harrsion radial drive lens found

[goamules]

I found a guy selling his dad's old camera equipment. We emailed for several days, it appeared he had a nice 14" Commercial Ektar. He also mentioned several other "no name" lenses, "with no marking." Two were brass. The pictures weren't clear, but it looked like a no name projector lens with the keyhole flange. And a clearly marked Euryscop II.

When I went to pick them up, I turned over the "projector" lens and instantly recognized it as an American radial drive, missing the knob. I collect these, and shoot them mostly in my wetplate work. I have most of the obscure makers, and have studied them for a lot of years. This one appears to me to be a CC Harrison, 10" petzval from 1849-1864. Several of the brass features, like the stepped flange, the very thick brass and more led me to this hypothesis. I was very happy that the glass was present. There was a pencil mark "ACW" or "ACM" on the edge of one glass, pretty unusual for American lenses. But the brass had been very deeply polished at some point, and I can't fathom the slightest bit of engraving (except maybe a script "C"). Still, it looks great on the ground glass.



The Euryscop II is the rare type, but is missing the rear element. Looks nice, but a paperweight right now.

The 14" Ektar (I'm selling my 12" now, on this forum) is good, as is the B&L IC Tessar. Good to ask questions to sellers, always.

[Mark Sawyer]

A nice group of lenses! I suspect the Euryscop II will be too fast to use as a single-element convertible, but you'll have to try anyways. If only we knew the full history of our old lenses...

[Jim Galli]

The series II can be modified with any diopter that is about the correct width. It won't make it what it was, but it'll get the speed back and get it in a usable ball park for focal length, and usually results in very fine if slightly soft images.

[goamules]

Thanks Jim, maybe I'll hold it for a while. I was thinking of selling, to let someone else worry about finding the part.

[Tim Deming]

Euryskop Series II are pretty scarce, even compared to Series III, which are a lot less common than the run of the mill Series IV. Good luck in finding a correct element to fit. As Jim said, it might be a lot more realistic to adapt this with something else.

[goamules]

Like a pencil holder?

[Tin Can]

Good idea. I now have 2 pencil holders!

I keep hoping to find the missing elements.

erasers...

[goamules]

Imagine when someone who knows lenses (the random 1 out of 1,000,000 person) sees a Euryscop II lens on your desk! He'll think to himself, "man what a dummy, he probably unscrewed the end of that rare lens to put the pencils in it, and lost it..."

[Mark Sawyer]

The series II can be modified with any diopter that is about the correct width. It won't make it what it was, but it'll get the speed back and get it in a usable ball park for focal length, and usually results in very fine if slightly soft images.

Put the diopter up front, and the front doublet in back, and you'll have the same basic layout as a Verito!

[Jim Galli]

Put the diopter up front, and the front doublet in back, and you'll have the same basic layout as a Verito!

Same number of glasses but I think the Verito may have been fuzzier, like a single group from the front end of a petzval, an achromatic meniscus.