The name is more exactly Ihagee Zweiformat Auto Ultrix. You may take either 6x9cm or 4,5x6cm pictures with it. What is then "Auto" for? My guess is that it is because the shutter is ever ready type. You just push the lever and that´s it. This is particularly true with Zenit or Ibsor shutters. Some advertises tells something about auto focusing ? The focus is ready when you open the camera. Perhaps this function was new at the time when Utrix was introduced ? Today, or was it yesterday, because of the advertisement regulations are more tight, they have to use a term "fixed focus" although you may see features like "fully automatic" in cameras that have absolutely nothing to set, not automatically nor manually. Plastic technical wonders should I say.
Numerous variety of Utrix cameras were made. In the "Ihagee" catalog 1931-32 there were 732 different lens/shutter/etc. combinations of Utrix available.
This camera is fitted with Zenit shutter. The shutter speeds are Z, B, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100sec.The lens is Jhagee Anastigmat 1:7,7 /10,5cm.
Camera is very nice looking with a glimpse of Art Deko style. It is also in a great condition. When I bought it on a flea market there was a film inside. I naturally devastated it.
In my dictionary evolution is a bit more gentle expression than a revolution and I am trying to dive in to the matter from various points of view.
Digital Revolution it is if you talk only about transmitting and reforming and saving data. Even this meets only in a minor part of this world until now. Eight out of ten Africans have never used a phone and the monthly cost of an Internet connection could be more than one year's salary of an ordinary citizen of Bangladesh.
The speed of an evolutionary process has always varied around the globe. Evolution uses contingency and that is somehow related to random access. You never know what you get or what you lose . I just lost a lot of bla bla which I had written because I did not understand the meaning of the damn paper clip who was asking "Do you want to retrieve etc...?
(I think I should change my MS Office Assistant to Genius.)
Why then Evolution?
Digital revolution in the means of electronic digital signals might have begun in Silicon Valley. I wonder if the American Indians have used binary code in the same area years before we knew anything about silicon chips. They used a binary code when they were sending information using smoke signals. Smoke or no smoke, that's the way. We Finns also used a somewhat simplified version. When an enemy threatened our coasts we set on bonfires to give a warning about a forthcoming danger. Thus "digital" is something that does not depend on computers or electronics, yet it is quite evident that something new has happened during the last decades.
There is a Revolution
The development in good and in bad has a tendency to accelerate in a square of time. During my existence the world has changed more than during the period of five hundred years before my birth. If the noun "Revolution" is conceived as a rapid change , we are constantly in a middle of a revolution.
The key principle of the Digital Revolution is that something what is present can be created and recorded through the use of numeric representations. By using an interpretation system, those digits can be brought back to display what was created and recorded.
The method of how we deal with information has radically changed. It has led to a flood of information, which has not necessarily led to flood of knowledge or wisdom.
What is the counterpart of the Digital Forces?
The Analog Alliance that has dominated is near to collapse. The Region of Cameras is already liberated. In certain backward regions there may still exist some desperate resistance.
2001 was a banner year for digital camera sales. In many countries the digital variety's sales surpassed that of traditional cameras for the first time .
For the full-year to March 2005, Nikon estimates sales of 6.6 million digital cameras worldwide, up by 22 percent. The trend is similar with other manufacturers.
There is one thing, which I am wondering. What will happen to the conventional digital snap shot cameras? I am almost sure that the development of the cameras fitted in cell phones is rapidly changing the market. Why carry a dagger if you can do the same with a "Leatherman". If you think strictly of business it could be better to sell them separately but there is a demand, which makes the choice ...Evolution as I wrote!
Machines of the doomsday
In 1765 James Hargreaves invented a spinning machine and he named it "Spinning Jenny" (according to his daughter). The invention was two hundreds times faster than an old fashioned spinning wheel. Factory workers were afraid of their jobs but it was a demand of fabric which initially triggered this invention. Losing the job was only temporary if even that. Consumption of textiles grow. Supply and demand took a balance.
Spinning Jenny was one of the first birds of the Industrial Revolution
Leonardo da Vinci brought out the first scenarios of a parachute long before the beginning of aviation. To make an invention in theory does not mean that somebody is able to realize it. The hands of the watch is easy to move but it does`t change the time.
Just think about what an enormous chain of different inventions had to be done before than such a common device like a cellular phone was ready to put into practice. This is a simple truth which is often blurred in the eyes of modern people. We may laugh at the inventions of the history. OK, but make those machines and write those theories using only the knowledge which is created before your attempt.
In 1946 a representation of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer), the gigantic machine credited with starting the modern computer age. A bank of blinking lights indicate the mysterious processes going on.That classic symbol of a computer has lasted long after computers evolved into friendly desktop tools.
ENIAC, with its 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, and 6,000 manual switches, was a monument of engineering -- and an energy hog. the ENIAC filled an entire room, weighed 30 tons, and consumed 175 kilowatts of power. The "processor" speed was huge 100 kHz. My desktop has a processor which is 28000 times faster. Really revolutionary progress within less than 60 years.
Perhaps some day we could see a machine which can convert iron to gold.
Bibliography/Source material: All over on the Internet ; )
