Comments on: ZOOM http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/zoom/ david cairns Sat, 25 May 2013 15:46:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: dcairns http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/zoom/#comment-61864 Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:06:44 +0000 http://dcairns.wordpress.com/?p=20700#comment-61864 Just spotted a particularly nice one showing off Cedric Gibbons’s set in Our Modern Maidens, a 1929 Joan Crawford soundie.

]]> By: dcairns http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/zoom/#comment-58196 Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:50:45 +0000 http://dcairns.wordpress.com/?p=20700#comment-58196 The name “Clile” is a particular mystery!

Thanks for this. I’ve emailed Mark, the guest author, to let him know.

]]> By: Nick Hall http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/zoom/#comment-58195 Mon, 24 Dec 2012 13:05:23 +0000 http://dcairns.wordpress.com/?p=20700#comment-58195 Fascinating post. The early history of the zoom lens is interesting and incredibly murky. Clile Allen’s zoom lens from 1901 is a particular mystery – I can’t believe nobody used it, and yet the earliest extant zoom is from 1927. There has to be evidence, somewhere, for an earlier zoom.

I’ve just finished a PhD research project on the use of the Zoomar and subsequent work in postwar film and television – but I didn’t dig deeply into the pre-war history. One thing that’s worth noting is the conceptual link between ‘zooms’ in lantern shows and other pre-cinematic optical entertainments, and zooms in later film work.

Readers here might be interested in my own website, http://www.zoomlenshistory.org.uk, which gives some brief details of my research and includes a bibliography which might be useful for further research. Priska Morrissey’s article in Positif’s 2008 special on the zoom is particularly detailed.

I’ve bookmarked this post and I’m sure early / precode experts will start to move the the ‘first zoom’ marker back.

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