ICA A/50 Analoge opvouwbare camera

A vintage ICA Atom platen A50 camera

You are bidding on a vintage ICA Atom platen A50. What a wonderful little collector camera. In good Condition ~Nice Collectable Camera.

Description

The Atom is a folding plate camera for 4.5x6 cm plates, originally made by Hüttig in 1908 and, after the firm took part in the merger to create Ica, by them from 1909-25.
There are three similar vertically-oriented models, the Atom A and the models 50 and 51; the Atom B is horizontally oriented.

The Hüttig cameras have two brilliant finders mounted in the centre at the front of the bed, allowing either model to be used upright or on its side. The ICA cameras have a single, slightly larger brilliant finder in the same position; these do not appear to be rotatable for use with the camera held on its side. The finder of the Atom B projects below the bed when erected.


Specifications


A number of lenses available for the Hüttig camera, including a simple achromat, an f/6.8 Dagor, an f/6.8 or f/5.4 Maximar or an f/6.3 Tessar; the shutter is one of Hüttig's own.
The ICA cameras are more common, and have either a 6.5 cm f/4.5 Tessar or an f/6.8 Hekla, and a dial-set Compound shutter with speeds 1-1/300 second.


History
"International Camera A.G." was formed on the 7th of October 1909 by four camera makers: Hüttig, Wünsche, Krügener and Carl Zeiss Palmos. Three years later, Zulauf was added.
In 1926, ICA merged with Contessa-Nettel, Ernemann and Goerz to form Zeiss Ikon. Some cameras kept the ICA logo after 1926.
Production was marked with a letter preceding the serial number, from the "A" until the "K". Then, Zeiss Ikon used the system from the letter "L" until 1972. The last camera a Nixe 555 with serial number K99xxx, keeps the name "Ica" on the body but it was already marketed with the name "Zeiss Ikon" on the front.
Original ICA factory data about production figures and serial numbers is not available. The information showed below is based on serial numbers and years of production of Carl Zeiss Jena lenses and Deckel Compur / Compound shutters.
The book "Carl Zeiss Kamera-Register 1902-2012" has been also used to know years of production of the Ica camera models.
Before to be mounted on a camera, lenses and shutters could have been stored in the factory for some time (even years). Not necessarily all of them were mounted in strictly chronological order, so, this table is merely approximate.
According to a sample over 600 cameras, this is the estimation:
letter estimate year of production
some early production without serial number 1909-1910
A 1910-1912
B 1912-1913
C 1913-1914
D 1914-1916
E 1916-1920
F 1920-1921
G 1921-1922
H 1921-1922
J 1922-1924
K 1924-1926
In 1910, Ica claimed to produce 90,000 cameras by year:
But serial numbers starting with the letter "A" have been found in cameras from 1911/1912. Maybe the affirmation was not fully true, anyway, some early cameras have been found without serial number, so, it is reasonable to think that the numeration system started later, or that it was not applied to all models from the beginning.

See pictures for cosmetic. All the pictures are from the object itself. What you see is what you will receive. The camera itself has not been tested by myself.
Please can you use the refnr “CAM059” in all our communications.

For your information, I will be selling about a hundred subminiature cameras from my collection in the coming months. So if you are a collector follow my account so you can follow my other items for sale the coming months. Thank you for bidding.