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The World’s Biggest Camera

HOW PHOTOGRAPHS EIGHT FEET WIDE ARE TAKEN.
By STEPHEN ELTON.

A MERICA is now able to boast that she not only “beats creation” generally,
but that she has beaten all records in taking huge photographs.
To the average photographer, who does business in caries de v/site and cabinets, and considers a “twelve by ten” the outside limit for practical purposes, the news comes
with a shock of surprise that a photograph covering 37 square feet can now be taken direct from the object without any process of
enlargement.
Needless to say, such photography calls for apparatus on a gigantic scale, and we must go to Chicago to find the camera for it. This was built by Mr. George K. Lawrence to the order of the Chicago and Alton Railway Company, who wished to secure some specially large photographs of their newest trains for the Paris Exhibition.
Now, a photograph of a train on a sensitised plate of ordinary size is not very effective, owing to the great length of the subject and the necessarily small scale upon which the wagons can be reproduced. But on a scale of 8-feet the details can be well shown. Hence the necessity for the giant camera, of which we are enabled to give several striking illustrations.
It took two-and-a-half months to build, and is of such proportions that it requires a special truck to convey it by rail, while a large furniture van is needed to transport it by road.
The camera, when extended, is 20-feet long, 9-feet high, and 6-feet wide. Its internal capacity is such that it will contain fifty men without difficulty. The glass plate, used for the negative, weighs over two hundred pounds, and costs £40.
Thus it is a somewhat costly business to take photographs on so large a scale, and, in addition, it calls for the services of a considerable number of men. It needs ten able-bodied men to carry the camera from its van and mount it upon the stout trestles which take the place of the ordinary tripod stand. To open the bellows and focus the camera demands the united exertions of from eight to fourteen men.
These processes are well shown in our illustrations, which have been made from instantaneous photographs.
It is pretty certain that, for the present, this camera represents the outside limit of size that is practicable, for anything further would require a larger size in dry plates and sensitised paper than has yet been manufactured.