{"id":25229,"date":"2023-02-20T01:03:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T05:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=25229"},"modified":"2023-02-18T01:22:21","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T05:22:21","slug":"ya-cant-win-em-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/ya-cant-win-em-all\/","title":{"rendered":"ya can’t win ’em all …"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Summer 1950 ad for the Range O Matic photo meter by Utilitron<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. There’s an old saying, “one born every minute<\/a>” attributed to P T Barnum but actually older. The resulting population subset forms the potential audience for the type of gadget advertised in a 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.<\/p>\n

Utilitron, the maker of the “Range O Matic<\/a>” is careful to state only the attributes of the gadget and let the reader’s imagination fill in the blanks. At $4.95 including tax, the company aimed at the bargain hunters in the would-be photographers’ fraternity. It cost much less than any one of the three instruments it was said to replace.<\/p>\n

Sadly, it was nothing more than a clever extinction mete<\/a>r with a few attached nomograms<\/a>. True light meters like a Weston Master or a GE were more expensive and far more accurate in use. The maker seems to have disappeared into the long night as has the Range O Matic (except the occasional one that is offered to collectors).<\/p>\n

My thanks to good friend George Dunbar for spotting this ad from last century and sharing it with us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. There’s an old saying, “one born every minute” attributed to P T Barnum but actually older. The resulting population subset forms the potential audience for the type of gadget advertised in a 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics. Utilitron, the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1944],"tags":[973,4289,857],"class_list":["post-25229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-advertisement","tag-photometer","tag-rangefinder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25229"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25234,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25229\/revisions\/25234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}