drawing of the Ansco Memo from “Cameras” by Brian Coe
Toronto. Professionals in the 19th and early 20th century chose a camera size such that the final print was a contact print, and generally not an enlargement from the negative. As movies grew in popularity, some manufacturers realized that a small 35mm film frame retained decent resolution even when enlarged to the size of a movie screen.
Photographic prints required far less magnification so some firms made cameras using the tiny 35mm roll film intended for movies. Since there was no standard cassette at the time each company made its own. The tiny cameras used a single movie frame as a negative -what was later known as a 1/2 frame once the Leica took hold with its use of a ‘double movie frame’ (1×1.5 inches).
In 1926/7, an American company, Ansco, in New York made a tiny precision camera called the Memo in various versions. This was the first precision camera made in the States. It went to market just a few short years after the famous Leica in Germany. Using a single movie frame piece of the 35mm film as a negative for each exposure, it was upright like later TLR camera designs.
The little Memo has appeared in many books including Brian Coe’s whimsical 1978 book titled, “Cameras – from Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures“, and Eaton Northrop Jr’s 1973 opus, “A Century of Cameras” based on the GEH collection in Rochester. The Memo is also covered by various web sites including Camera Wiki.
