Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/257



O handle a camera as easily as a ranchman manipulates a six-shooter, and to make its aim and result equally effective, is the purpose of several ingenious inventions patented by J. N. Johnson of Albuquerque New Mexico. He has obviated the necessity of clumsily focusing the camera by means of a finder. In addition, he claims that the camera may be aimed and operated with one hand, like a revolver, and all its films discharged, without the loss of clearness and accuracy.

The camera is the happy combination of two devices: a leveling and sighting appendage, and a repeating or magazine mechanism. These devices may be used separately, if desired.

The leveling and sighting appendage is a simple contrivance constructed of two horizontal tubes connected at their center by a vertical tube containing the shutter-operating bulb. This bracket-like device may be placed on the top or the bottom of the camera, thereby enabling the photographer to aim in any direction he wishes—horizontally, vertically, or over the heads of a crowd. The bracket is so pivoted that the camera hangs automatically plumb or level, no matter how the operator holds it. The shutter is operated in the familiar way by compressed air sent through the rubber tube by the bulb in the handle. The sights on the upper bar of the bracket take the place of the finder and insure the accuracy of the photographer.

A motor-operated mechanism is the second important device, designed automatically to shift the film after each movement of the shutter, so that a number of

snap shots may be taken in rapid succession. This invention is conveniently adapted to the ordinary film now in use. Though other magazine cameras operating on this general principle are not unknown, the present invention is to improve the shifting of the film so that it may be turned by a mechanical contrivance actuated by air pressure. It also aims to

produce a direct and running mechanism to prevent a double exposure of the film. A spring-like contrivance moves the film over the rollers, a movable pin controls the starting and stopping of the film at the right point; air pressure opens the shutter; while its exhaust releases this spring contrivance which sets the film rolling for the next picture.

The self-leveling repeating camera is the combined result of these two inventions. The accompanying pictures illustrate its makeup and its operation. They show its large range of possibilities as a snap shot camera. The camera fiend can stalk his prey with even less difficulty than in the past.