Devices for the vertical transport of people and cargo have been known since ancient times. They consist mainly of a platform or cabin for the passengers or cargo, a rope with block and tackle, and a counterweight to the load being transported. Over time, the driving force in the lifting devices has been provided by animals, then steam, and finally the electric motor. The passenger lift cabin presented here, made of wood on a steel frame, was used in the Press Palace on Wielopole street in Kraków. It features a unique safety feature in the event that the rope snaps – a device that would catch the cabin in guides, developed by the American designer Elisha Graves Otis around the middle of the 19th century. The cabin was built in the 1920’s at a Viennese factory specialising in the production of metal safes and lift devices, F. Wertheim & Comp. The company was established in 1852 by Franz Wertheim, a tool manufacturer. In 1869, to mark the occasion of the sale of 20,000 fireproof safes of its own design, it commissioned the work Feuerfest (“Fire Festivity”) from Joseph Strauss. The title relates to the spectacular fire resistance tests of Wertheim’s safes that earned them widespread recognition throughout Europe.

References:
Biography of the founder, official website of Wertheim company, http://www.wertheim.at/en/company/biography-of-the-founder.html (Accessed on 7.05.2021).

This item is the F.K. model C 48 double-register typewriter with a type bar mechanism, designed for office work. The device was manufactured by the Carbine Factory (Fabryka Karabinów – “FK”), which started manufacturing typewriters in 1925 using a license owned by the French Etablissements Continsouza company (its own brand of devices: Contin). In 1922, the latter obtained the rights and design solutions from Seidel & Naumann to produce the Ideal D model. Acquiring the patent rights from German enterprises was made easier thanks to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. Next, the company from Dresden acquired the patents given to the French by the American company Barney & Tanner in 1900.
The Fabryka Karabinów was established on July 15, 1898, as Towarzystwo Akcyjne Fabryki Maszyn Gerlach i Pulst. During the Polish-Bolshevik war, in around 1920, the company was nationalised. In 1927 the factory became part of the military industry group – Państwowe Wytwórnie Uzbrojenia (PWU). The holding structure also included three other factories: Fabryka Sprawdzianów (FS) (Eng. measurement equipment factory) in Warsaw, Fabryka Amunicji (FA) (Eng.: ammunition factory) in Skarżysko, and Fabryka Broni (FB) (Eng.: weapons factory) in Radom. Around 1935, Państwowa Wytwórnia Uzbrojenia moved production of typewriters to the latter. This involved a change to the logo – the diamond shape placed on typewriters up to 1935 was replaced by the figure of a Tatra mountain highwayman shooting a bow. Due to the recognisability of the previous brand, the acronym “F.K” or its phonetic form “EFKA” were added to the full name of the consortium and used until 1939. The unit presented here bears the inscription of the repair workshop and specialist shop of S. Aksman in Kraków, but that was added at a later time (it was probably applied after World War II). As production of typewriters was discontinued in Poland after 1945 for almost a quarter century, users could either purchase imported models or use pre-war devices.
The C 48 is one of the three models of the typewriter (the others being C 28 and C 34), and the largest of them. The number in the name specifies the length of the platen in centimetres. The platen is placed on a moving carriage. From 1928 the FK typewriters were assembled from imported parts, and from 1932 they were manufactured in Warsaw using patent-protected solutions that included several enhancements contributing to the quality of device operation. Mechanisms damping the carriage travel were implemented in the design of the FK typewriters, the pressure of paper against the platen was added, row change was made easier, a tabulator as well as springs adjusting the pressure of type bars were added, and the platen rotation mechanism, as well as that for setting the line spacing, were improved.

Author: Filip Wróblewski

The coordinatograph is a device for plotting points with specific coordinates on maps by punching holes in the map. The presented coordinatograph is based on the Cartesian coordinate system and it is used for plotting points with specific ordinate (y) and abscissa (x) coordinates. The point of punching is indicated thanks to the presence of two perpendicular rulers with scales and moving carriages. One of the rulers is fixed and is used for reading out the ordinate, and the other, mounted on a moving carriage, allows reading out the abscissae and mark them with a needle mounted on another carriage moving along the ruler. The instrument presented here was made in the Specjalna Fabryka Instrumentów Geodezyjnych i Rysunkowych Gustawa Gerlacha in Warsaw in the 1920s or 1930s. The establishment operated from 1816 until World War II and it specialised in the production of surveying instruments such as theodolites, levellers and range finders. Instruments from the G. Gerlach factory were considered to be on par in terms of quality with products of the most renowned German manufacturers, such as Zeiss. The company’s strong position was evidenced by international awards and the presence of its branch offices and sales outlets in several cities.
Interesting fact: The presented object has an untypical scale of 1:2880, characteristic of Austro-Hungarian maps from the period before introduction of the metric system in 1872.

References:
M. Kluza, Polscy wytwórcy instrumentów naukowych w XIX wieku [in:] Polscy twórcy aparatury naukowej, ed. A. Strzałkowski, Monografie series, vol. X, Kraków 2006, pp. 277–285.
G. Gerlach najstarsza polska wytwórnia sprzętu geodezyjnego, prepared by S. Walczak, exhibition catalogue of the Museum of Technology in Warsaw in accordance with the programme prepared by the Main Commission for Museums and Exhibitions of the Polish Surveyors’ Association, Warsaw, October 1973.

The purpose of a still camera is to record images of objects in space on light-sensitive materials: glass plates, light-sensitive film, or digitally. Its predecessor was the camera obscura (pinhole camera). The device uses the phenomenon of projecting an inverted image onto the opposite side of the box. Such a design was already known in ancient times. The modern photographic camera was invented in 1839 by French entrepreneurs the Susse brothers, whose device created photographs using the daguerreotype technique. The first small-frame photographic camera, the Leica Camera AG, was designed by Oskar Barnack in 1913, and launched on the market 12 years later. A twin-lens reflex camera was launched in 1929.
This box camera made of Bakelite is the simplest kind of photographic camera with a screw-in lens. In designing the device, the assumption was that the camera would be a cheap, small, and simple to use device for budding photo enthusiasts. Work on the prototype was completed in August 1955. The Druh camera was built following the model of the German Pouva Start camera, whose design was inspired by the pre-War French Photax II Blindé art déco-styled camera.
The camera has a simple, slide-out Bilar periscope-type lens with two identical, symmetrically placed 1:8 lenses with a focal length of 65 mm. On the left side of the lens there is a switch for diaphragms, i.e., moving metal sheets installed within the lens. As they change position, they adjust the opening through which light enters the camera. The number “8” on the camera means that the lens is fully open, while “16” means it is closed. On a sunny day, the user set the aperture to “8”, and “16” on a cloudy day. On the right side of the lens is a knob for setting the shutter to “M” 1/50 s, and a shutter speed knob marked with the letter “B”, indicating that the shutter remains open for as long as the camera button is pressed.
The Druh camera used the 120-type film with backing paper, with a width of 60 mm, on thick-spool rolls. It could be used to make twelve 6×6 cm, or sixteen 4.5×6 cm, photographs. It was also possible to make sixteen 6×4.5 cm photographs using special blinds. The camera housing was made of Bakelite. A screw-in lens allowed the device’s overall size to be reduced.
The camera was manufactured by the Warszawskie Zakłady Foto-Optyczne (WZFO) in 1955-1965. The enterprise continued the activities of Warszawskie Zakłady Kinotechniczne, established in 1951. In the late 1960s it became part of Polskie Zakłady Optyczne.
Interesting fact: millions of Poles began their adventure with photography using the Druh cameras. As many as 1,100,000 units were built.

Authors: Beata Krzaczyńska, Piotr Turowski

The purpose of the Jantar OT 1492 television set, manufactured by the Warszawskie Zakłady Telewizyjne (WZT) in 1959-1960, was to receive television broadcasts. In terms of the electrical system, it is a mains-powered, twelve-channel superheterodyne with a black-and-white CRT and diversified audio reception methods. The television receiver was developed as one in a series of devices named after precious stones. They included the Szmaragd and Turkus receivers, which only differed from the Jantar in terms of the housing and the CRT size. The Jantar, Turkus, and Szmaragd had identical electronic systems developed with the maximum possible use of mechanical parts and components from the preceding Belweder model manufactured by the WZT in 1955-1957. The Jantar is an example of an innovative approach to designing utility objects. This is a television receiver model in which, for the first time in Poland, a combined housing is used, utilising plastics (produced in different colours). It is a combination of a metal box and a polystyrene front. It was lighter and cheaper to produce than the previously used wooden housings. An unquestionable advantage of the solution applied in the design is the complete isolation of the housing from the chassis of the receiver, which prevents the risk of an electrical shock. The housing has a streamlined shape, which was achieved by additionally softening the edges and corners with arched or semi-circular profiling. For its time, the receiver was distinguished by its modern appearance, which fully embodied the design aesthetics of the 1950s and 1960s.

Authors: Piotr Turowski, Filip Wróblewski

The Rodenstock camera is a bellows camera manufactured in the 1930s by the German Optische Werke G. Rodenstock optical works. A camera with bellows represents the next stage in the development of camera design after the box camera. The advantages of flexible bellows with a slide-out lens include: the ability to use a large range of focus, ease of correcting the perspective, comfortable folding and unfolding, and relatively small dimensions when folded up. Such devices are very well suited for macro photography, i.e., where the recorded object is reproduced in its natural dimensions or slightly enlarged. Making such photographs was made possible by the double extension mechanism, where the camera lens is placed on a slide-out carriage attached to the lowered camera lid. In addition, thanks to the knob and the sliding mechanism, the carriage with the bellows can slide beyond the cover. The lens mechanism with the shutter can also be moved left or right, along the front axis of the camera. Such a solution allows relatively easy adjustment of focus, and thereby also of image sharpness.
The camera was sold by the Rodenstock company but not built by it. It has a ready-made housing, and a bellows mechanism purchased from another company dealing with the production and supply of such devices. A Rodenstock lens with a shutter made by Friedrich Deckel AG was installed on the complete camera. The entire unit thus assembled was sold as a Rodenstock camera. This was standard practice in the production of cameras at the time.
The Rodenstock family company was established by brothers Josef and Michael Rodenstock in 1877 in Würzburg, initially as a precision engineering workshop. At its inception, the company was named Einzelhandelsfirma Optisches Institut G. Rodenstock. In 1883. the seat of the rapidly developing company was moved to Munich. Over time, the company specialised in the production of lenses, spectacle frames, and optical instruments. From the beginning of the 20th century, Rodenstock produced series of lenses for different cameras. The company’s strength was its ability to implement innovative ideas. As early as 1899, the first corrective sunglasses with a UV filter were developed there, as well as “diaphragm glasses” – spectacle lenses with a black rim to prevent unwanted glare on the edges. Other achievements of the company include aperture and bifocal lenses. In 1968, Rodenstock was Europe’s first manufacturer to introduce self-tinting lenses, and in 1975 it developed the world’s first plastic lenses.

Author: Filip Wróblewski

A planimeter is an instrument for determining the surface area of flat surfaces, e.g. an area on a map. Measurement of the area of geometric shapes is possible in many ways, which results in there being several types of planimeters, which use different principles of operation and are built in different ways. The first planimeter was designed in 1814 by Johann Martin Hermann, after which a rapid development of different designs of these devices followed. The planimeter presented here is relatively simple. It has the form of a frame equipped with parallel threads placed at small distances from each other. After applying on a drawing or map, the frame allowed measuring a surface by breaking it up into a series of stripes, whose total length defines the surface area of the shape. The presented instrument was made about 120 years ago in the Viennese establishment of Joseph and Carl Neuhöfer, specialising in the production of different types of land surveying instruments. The high precision of execution of the brass frame with markings and scales is noteworthy. This unit was used until the 1960s by a land surveyor in Kraków, to make land register maps.

References:
F. Kucharzewski, Planimetry polskie i ich wynalazcy, “Przegląd Techniczny” 1902, https://bcpw.bg.pw.edu.pl/Content/4521/przeglad_techniczny_1902_t40_nr21_s247.pdf, accessed: 2.06.2021.
M. Kluza, Polscy wytwórcy instrumentów naukowych w XIX wieku [w:] Polscy twórcy aparatury naukowej, ed. A. Strzałkowski, Monografie series, vol. X, Kraków 2006, pp. 277–285.
C. Neuhöfer, Neuhöfer & Sohn of Vienna, translated by J. B. te Pas, „Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society” 1997, issue 52 (1997), pp. 31-32, https://cdn.website-start.de/proxy/apps/ilai8i/uploads/gleichzwei/instances/83BA095F-F52A-41E5-A000-752EC15ABDB0/wcinstances/epaper/f390f418-fd31-482d-b173-cde29019c6ce/pdf/Neuh%C3%B6fer-&-Sohn.pdf, accessed 01.06.2021.