American made?

Agreed. The U.S. just never made a commercially successful 35mm system camera. Also, don't forget the Premier Instrument Kardon. Not as nice of a Leica copy as the British Reid, but more amenable to mass production (not that they were ever made in great numbers). In fact, I'm shooting w/my Kardon today! ;-)

jlw said:
In its time, the Kodak Ektra was by far the most technologically advanced 35mm rangefinder system in the world. It was dogged by shutter reliability problems, which Kodak likely would have scienced out if World War II had not intervened, and the only reason the improved Ektra II didn't appear after the war was that Kodak priced it out and concluded they couldn't sell it at the price they would have had to charge to make a profit.

As someone else mentioned, the Bell & Howell Foton was another very advanced US-made rangefinder 35. At that time B&H was one of the world's leading manufacturers of professional 16mm and 35mm motion picture cameras, its Filmo and Eyemo models being renowned for producing precise results and being nearly indestructible. The Foton had a metal focal-plane shutter of unique and very dependable design, and its spring motor drive made it capable of shooting bursts of up to six frames per second. This was long, long before the days of widespread electric motor drives, and even the spring-wound Robot cameras of the day could shoot only single shots, so the Foton -- although mind-bendingly expensive by still-camera standards -- found favor with some of the era's leading professional sports photographers.

Below the top ranks, there were several other good lower-priced US-made 35mm cameras. One of my own favorites is the original Kodak Signet 35, which has an unambitious 4-speed shutter but an excellent Ektar lens and a very rugged die-cast body.

The reason these precision 35mm cameras declined was partly photographer snobbery -- "German is better" and later "Japanese is better," despite plenty of awful examples to the contrary -- but mostly manufacturing cost. Kodak and other manufacturers found out that they could make more money by deploying their high-precision manufacturing capabilities to other industry segments, such as defense work, and left the more price-sensitive consumer market to foreign competition.
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I love the way Americans like to re-write history! Penicillin a US innovation? I don't think so, discovered by a Scotsman, Alexander Fleming, who went on to win a Nobel Prize.

On the whole, I think the US tends to lead with the core innovations, leaving other countries to mess with the mass production. Intel leads the world with microprocessors but where are most PCs made? the Apple iPod - designed in California, made in China. The UK is the only country outside the US to have Tivo and I'm pleased we do.

Apart from the specialist pockets, American beer is foul, the wine is inconsistent but can be outstanding, in my experience. American cars are pretty awful.

One of the US products I use most? An iconic Hewlett-Packard HP-55 calculator from 1975 which (along with its sibilings) lead the way away from the slide-rule. Still great after 31 years and mine is a US made one, not one made in Singapore. That was before HP seriously lost their way.
 
Many years ago I used to work for Marconi Instruments. HP were the only competitor we worried about. There was lots of rivalry, the people at MI claiming that HP was only so good because the US Govt. pumped money into them to help NASA in the space race. Whatever the truth, quality gear.

Thanks to Gabrielma for the heads up on Argentine interest in the Falklands again, although I see from the date it's not really "breaking news"! If they've got any sense, they'll wait till our three remaining (miniature) aircraft carriers are decommissioned and just walk in and take the place. I don't believe these two new Anglo-French carriers will ever get off the drawing board, and even if they did, jsf is coming in overweight so wouldn't be able to take off from the flight deck anyway. But still, the Argentine military never did have much sense; In 1982 they ordered 100 exocets from France, received the first 6 then invaded. I think those 6 bagged 3 or 4 British ships. If they had 100, they probably would've won. Then Margaret Thatcher would've lost the next election, Michael Foot would be PM, we'd now be living in a very different Britain indeed...
 
Mark Norton said:
American beer is foul, the wine is inconsistent but can be outstanding, in my experience. American cars are pretty awful.
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You have to move away from the mainstream U.S. beer.; carbonated hyper-water-reduced bread dough isn't my idea of beer, and some are finally getting the message.

But it's profit margins that speak: if they can make 60 cents off every $1 they put into a product that people are going to consume anyway, than make 40 cents off every $1 for a product that really stands out for the same retail price, well, they teach in the Dilbert School of Bidness that The Bottomline is Supreme.

And that is why everywhere you look you'll find something that says "Made in you-know-where". Local economies have lost their skilled workforce over cents per dollar on PowerPoint reports.

We will pay dearly in a generation or so.
 
Don't forget the Deardorff view cameras made in Chicago and some very fine lenses designed and made by the great yellow father Kodak. The fantastic Goertz view lenses were made by American Optical too. The strobe was invented by Dr. Egerton , I think at MIT, Polaroid from Dr. Land and Speedotron studio strobes made in Chicago. Also the transistor was a product of Bell Laboratories. Oh yes, motion picture was developed by Thonas Edison along with thousands of other inventions.
 
brachal said:
The commercial Hobart mixers (like a Kitchen Aid but huge) are some of the best objects ever produced in America. I once worked in a kitchen with a 70-year old Hobart that had been used hard every day, and it was still in perfect working order.
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Singer patcher sewning machines I was using one made in the early 1900s [1910 to be exact] in 1978, and it is STILL going strong and the design has only changed by adding an electric motor

I doubt that there are very many Prosthetic/orthotic facilities without a patcher
 
mpt600 said:
I thought tv was invented by Logie Baird in Brighton? And computers by Charles Babbgage? And the internet by Sir Tim Berners-Lee? And wasn't the ball point pen invented by a Hungarian called Laszlo Biro?
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Baird invented a mechanically-scanned television system, which he demonstrated to a committee of scientists in 1926. However, mechanical scanning TV systems were obsolete by 1930. Electronically scanned television, the type used today, was invented by Philo Farnsworth of Utah, who first demonstrated and patented his system in 1927 (when he was all of 21 years old!) He's still relatively little-known for this owing to a concerted campaign by RCA Corporation's General Sarnoff to claim credit for the invention based on later work by RCA researcher Vladimir Zworykin (whose development was based in part on a scanning tube developed by Hungarian inventor Kalman Tihanyi.)

Tim Berners-Lee conceived the World Wide Web as a way of disseminating information over the Internet. He first proposed this in 1989, while working at the European Institute for Particle Research in Switzerland. At that time, though, the Internet itself was already well-established, having begun as a U.S. Defense Department project in 1969 and had basically stabilized in something resembling its current form by 1987, when the Domain Naming System was introduced.

And you can get almost any answer you want to the question, "Who invented the computer?" depending on how you choose to define "computer"...
 
tkluck said:
I was looking at an Argus C3 and got to wondering why we never made a "good" 35mm camera in the USA. Of coarse my next thought was we don't make a good motorcycle here eather.

Is there a connection? Fuel for a PBS documentary?

Highly speculative, and mostly food for thought only:
(doning my Nomex suit)
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My opinion on your list...
Good:
- Sheaffer Snorkel pen
No idea what that is. I like Bic.
- Picket slide rule
I don't even know any oldtimers that use those anymore. No offense but you must really be an old oldtimer.
- hand tools (some)
All my precision measuring tools are made in Japan. Japanese tool and die makers/ gage makers rival any in the world IMO.
- firearms
I agree.
- locomotives
I miss seeing/ hearing trains everyday in my area.
- airplanes
I have no idea.

not that good:
- 35mm cameras
I have literally piles covering multiple formats and decades of cameras and lenses. The only America one's I can think of is an old Brownie (a decoration that's never been used by me) and an Argus C44 that's got one of the best 50mm's I own. Everything else I'm still using is Japanese.
- motor cycles
I've never owned an American one.
- carving tools
If I need a fancy knife then I just make my own.
- beer
I don't drink. Even when I did I never could understand beer.
- ammunition
What about Cor-Bon?

Add to that American car companies (well they used to be) and I'm otherwise in agreement.
 
jlw said:
And you can get almost any answer you want to the question, "Who invented the computer?" depending on how you choose to define "computer"...
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This is the ultimate truth. For one contested example, the real reason to give the Wright brothers priority on the airplane is here: http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal100/wright_flight.jpg

The rest don't have that tiny detail... 🙂

But so many other equally important changes to our world do not have that kind of documentation, on glass plates or otherwise... :bang:

William
 
gabrielma said:
You have to move away from the mainstream U.S. beer.; carbonated hyper-water-reduced bread dough isn't my idea of beer, and some are finally getting the message.
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It is rather surprising that the mainstream USA beer is called Budweiser. The real Budweiser was and is made in the Czech town of Budjowice for hundreds of years, long before its name was "re-used".😀 Rather nice beer, btw 🙂
loveonthebeach.jpg

Love on the Beach
 
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