425. Optimar Matchbox Camera

Very rare Matchbox Camera by Optimar, 14x14mm on 16mm film in special sheet metal twin cassettes. Self-tensioning guillotine shutter “Instant” and “B”, fixed focus Meyer Görlitz Trioplan 1:4 f=2cm lens, uncoated. Film transport by turning a knurled wheel next to the release knob for a half turn (a groove serves as indicator). No serial numbers. The substantial brass body of the camera has two different labels on the upper and lower sides: ‘Blue Circle Safety matches’ and ‘Le Soleil Alumettes Suisses de Sureté impregnées’. It comes with the original cassette and is fully functional. In 1943 Kodak designed a clandestine camera for the American OSS (forerunner of the CIA): the ‘Camera X’ or ‘M.B.Camera’, as it was eventually called, it took 34 images 14 x 14 mm on 16mm film, had a f/5 f=25mm fixed focus lens and requested darkroom loading. After the war in 1947, a successor for the manufacture was found in the Salzburg based company Malkemus & Reinhold (trade name OPTIMAR) in the American zone of occupied Austria. The Optimar Matchbox camera (of which this camera is an example) was delivered to the CIC, the Counter Intelligence Corps of the American military, from where Optimar also got the lenses (which were taken from German Luftwaffe cameras, where they had served for printing data on the negatives). The Optimar Matchbox camera was very similar to the Kodak camera, differing only in some minor details of the transport and release mechanisms. The main body structure was now aluminium, milled from the solid (as opposed to the Bakelite of the Kodak camera). Two series were built in Salzburg (300 and 150 examples), very few are known to exist today.

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