early Kodak cabinet snapshots - Cricket

[Runscott]

While on vacation in Colorado I stumbled upon a pile of early Kodak mounted snapshots from 1889-94, including rare smaller format ones taken with the Kodak or Kodak #1 cameras (not possible to tell which was used, as format was the same).

Here is one from the early 1890's taken with a Kodak #2, featuring cricket action, followed by detail from the photo and detail from a similar one. It looks like some sort of practice field, as there are several batters and pitchers. The few that were dated from this batch, were 1892 or 1894.

Below those is an 1889-dated snapshot, just to show the formatting difference. The images were round to compensate for blurred edges. The Kodak #2 corrected for some of the blurring, allowing a larger image to be printed. To develop these you sent in your camera which included film of 100 photos, and they mailed back the cabinet photos and your camera. The two 1889 photos I picked up (other Kodak/Kodak #1 prints were not dated as early) both have a print design I have not seen before: "The Eastman Dry Plate & Film Co", as opposed to "Eastman Kodak Co." or "Eastman Co." Many of the snapshots did not have a back ad, some were mounted to larger pieces of cardboard and some had gold edges while others did not. This could mean that people were sending the photos to a developer other than Kodak, but I don't know.

Keep in mind that these were the first photos taken by folks like me and you, so most of them are not all that great.