Wollensak was an American manufacturer of audio-visual products. At the height of their popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, many brands of movie camera

Movie camera

The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film which was very popular for private use in the last century until its successor, the video camera, replaced it...

s came with a Wollensak Velostigmat lens. Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorders were prized for their robust construction and value.

History

The firm was founded in 1899 by Andrew Wollensak to produce camera shutters. At its peak in the 1950s, it employed over a thousand people. The company had several owners, including Revere Camera Company

Revere Camera Company

The Revere Camera Company was started in 1920 by Mr. Samuel Briskin, who also started Wollensak Recorders and Opticals.Founded in 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, USA as the Excel Radiator Company by Ukrainian immigrant Samuel Briskin to manufacture car radiators, but started manufacturing some coarse...

 and 3M

3M

3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....

 Company. Wollensak ceased operation in 1972.

Camera equipment

Wollensak began making camera lenses in 1902. The company also produced camera shutters for large format cameras. They made shutters such as the Betax, Alphax, Optimo and, for the Graflex Corporation, Rapax.

The Betax shutters were patented in 1912 and remain popular for large format photographers today. Betax shutters are made in different sizes from size #0 to the huge size #5. These shutters are very reliable and relatively easy to repair.

Wollensak purchased the Fastax high speed rotating-prism camera developed by Bell Labs

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

 from Western Electric

Western Electric

Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...

, and developed it to a capability of 10,000 frame/s,. Fastax cameras were used for recording projectiles and explosions, including nuclear explosions. The cameras, with the rotating prism removed, were often used for "streak" and "smear" photography. see High speed photography

High speed photography

High speed photography is the science of taking pictures of very fast phenomena. In 1948, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers defined high-speed photography as any set of photographs captured by a camera capable of 128 frames per second or greater, and of at least three...

.

Wollensak only ever made one still camera, the "Stereo 10" 35 mm 3D Camera

Audio-visual

3M also used the Wollensak brand name on audio tape recorders for many years. They were among the first manufacturers of cassette

Compact Cassette

The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...

 decks, as well as 8-track decks for home use.