Merlin Novelty Subminiatuur camera

A vintage Black Merlin Sub Miniature Camera, Made in England

You are bidding on a vintage black Merlin Sub Miniature Camera, Made in England. What a wonderful little collector camera. In very good Condition ~Nice Collectable Camera


Description

Subminiature camera pretty Made in England (ca. 1936) United Optical is the Merlin. A small camera with metal body and single shutter (speed). Its dimensions are 46x35x46 mm around. Uses a special film roll with a size of about 20x20mm negative. Merlin is a subminiature camera molten metal using a special roll film 20 mm. A roll of film frames produces seven 18x18mm. It was manufactured by United Optical Instruments of Southend-on-Sea, England - possibly in the late 1930s has a single shutter speed and f / 16 lens fixed focus. The body has a viewfinder frame folded up, and is finished with a crackle-effect paint, available in red, blue, green and black.


History
In 1936 the English firm, United Optical Instruments, 162 High Street, Southend-on-Sea, Essex marketed the Merlin, a cast metal novelty camera fastened together with two screws. It is one of the strongest cameras every made, easily tough enough to withstand the weight of a full-grown man although now it equally likely to fracture in your hand.
The Merlin was sold in black, blue, green and red in a crackle finish enamel.
It used a special 20mm roll film taking 20 exposures 18x18 mm. It had a single speed shutter and a f/16 lens.
It has a collapsible sports finder, a polished metal winding knob and an instantaneous shutter.

Some cameras have an orange transfer on the underside that gives the camera name. This is usually well worn or missing leaving a fait trace of it's outline.
A later version of has a lock for the back of the camera.


Merlin was used (without the finder frames) as the bowels of the chamber of the gun ERAC mercury.
The Merlin was used (without the frame finder) as the innards of the ERAC
Mercury pistol camera.In 1937 Steward patented a pistol shaped device which he introduced on the market the following years as the Erac Automatic Pistol Camera. The Erac Selling Company of London was infact based in Southend-on-Sea. This is a simple bakelite box in the shape of a snub-nosed pistol. The two halves of the case are held together with a single large screw. The large trigger-ratchet mechanism, fired the shutter and also advanced the film; when it worked.
The box declared "ERAC - The camera which is always ready, the only real snapshot camera in the world, no film winding, just pull the trigger, the camera does the rest."



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 “CAM046” 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.