{"id":7615,"date":"2017-02-06T09:13:53","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T13:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=7615"},"modified":"2017-02-04T21:51:49","modified_gmt":"2017-02-05T01:51:49","slug":"a-repeating-flashbulb-november-1941","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/a-repeating-flashbulb-november-1941\/","title":{"rendered":"A Repeating Flashbulb (November 1941)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mechanix Illustrated – \u00a0a repeating flash<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. We never think about flash or flash bulbs today. With our digital cameras or smart phones a built in flash automatically goes off \u00a0(or the camera\/phone warns us) to provide sufficient light. Even in the 1950s (unless you were well heeled or a pro) people used flash bulbs and flash guns to add illumination so the painfully slow film of the day could be used indoors or at night.<\/p>\n

Edgerton<\/a>\u00a0at MIT in the USA experimented with electronic flash that operated at an astonishing speed of 1\/20,000 second (give or take). And the November 1941 Mechanix Illustrated<\/a> (not always the most reliable source – great in this day of alternative ‘facts’) reported on a repeating flash. The flash was depicted in use by a diminutive young women holding a massive news camera to her eye. Attached is the ‘repeating’ flash gun and over her shoulder hangs the heavy case holding the batteries and capacitors that trigger the flash. I had a used Ultrablitz Reporter IIL<\/a> in the late 1950s that was only slightly smaller in size and fired at 1\/800th to 1\/400th of a second. It was capable of firing two flash guns simultaneously.<\/p>\n

This 1941 ad is courtesy of an email from George Dunbar. George adds this comment, “That’s quite a portable power unit there. Then again it’s also a pretty big camera. I think it’s funny that they always use female models for these things. While I get the ‘it’s so easy a woman can do it!’ angle, it tends to make big things look more unwieldy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. We never think about flash or flash bulbs today. With our digital cameras or smart phones a built in flash automatically goes off \u00a0(or the camera\/phone warns us) to provide sufficient light. Even in the 1950s (unless you were … 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":[24],"tags":[916,917,755,918,919],"class_list":["post-7615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camera","tag-edgerton","tag-electronic","tag-flash","tag-mechanix-illustrated","tag-ultrablitz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615","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=7615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7620,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7615\/revisions\/7620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}