Vintage Objects Collection: cameras, calculators, radios, and period mechanics

Not a catalogue, but a personal geography

This page does not host a collection in the academic or museum sense of the word: there are no closed series to be completed at all costs, nor mint-condition pieces kept under glass cloches safe from time. It is rather the tangible archive of a continuous mechanical curiosity, where each object has been chosen for the engineering ingenuity it holds.

Mechanical curiosity, flea markets, and functional recovery

What has settled on these shelves over time is the result of instinctive encounters: instruments unearthed on flea market stalls, devices rescued from the back of old workshop drawers, or family heirlooms tied to specific life chapters.

The common denominator is not commercial value, but the experience at the workbench: mechanical gear calculators, precision optical instruments, old radios, consoles, retrocomputing machines, and an obstinate fondness for digital quartz watches from the 1970s to today. Almost all of them have passed under the workshop loupe: dismantled down to the last component, deoxidised, their contacts cleaned, and brought back to working order while respecting their original signs of wear.

From optical instruments to digital watches: the common thread of ingenuity

At first glance, these might seem like disparate and unrelated fields, but the common thread lies in the technical solutions adopted by those who designed them decades ago. Each piece recounts a brilliant engineering intuition, a repair challenge that taught me something, or a moment of technological breakthrough. Seen together, they form the pieces of a practical journey that explains how I look at things, physical matter, and the workings of mechanisms.

Restoration notes and object profiles

In the profiles below, I have singled out a few of these pieces: those that, due to their mechanical architecture, workshop history, or simply the sheer stubbornness required to get them running again, deserved to be documented with dedicated notes.

Vintage folding Kodak bellows camera with manual shutter alongside its original brown leather case

Kodak Folding

The First Vintage Piece

Model: Bellows camera with Kodex No. 1 shutter
Era: Circa 1930s

Found among the stalls of a flea market in Argentina: it was my absolute first vintage purchase. On the original leather case, the previous owner had hand-carved a shooting memo with a sharp point: «sol 100 11 16-18» and «sombra 25 - 6.3 50 - 8». A few numbers scratched into the leather to remember shutter speeds and apertures depending on the sun, back when light meters didn't exist and you photographed trusting only your eyes.

Inside, there is still an undeveloped roll of film, and I decided to leave it there to safeguard its shots forever.

It is a fine example of period mechanical engineering: just press a button and the door springs forward, popping open the accordion bellows, ready to use. No batteries or circuits, just an ingenious system of springs and metal blades in the shutter that fires the photo with a sharp, precise "click".

Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex

The Charm of the Waist-Level Finder

Model: Ikoflex I (with Compur shutter and Carl Zeiss Jena lens)
Era: Late 1930s (Germany)

An inherited family heirloom, about which I initially knew very little, but which possesses a tremendously powerful visual soul. It has that compact, solid design that immediately transports you to another era: heavily grained faux leather, chrome finishes, and a reassuring heft in the hand. It is a classic Twin-Lens Reflex (TLR) camera: the two front "eyes" work in parallel. The top one is used purely to view the scene, projecting the image onto a frosted glass screen that you look down into by popping open the hood, while the bottom one actually takes the photo on the film.

Zeiss Ikon designed it in the 1930s to rival the famous Rolleiflex. Nothing is automatic: you focus by turning the large side knob, manually cock the shutter, and compose the shot holding the camera at chest height. More than just a simple photographic device, it is an invitation to slow the pace and look at the world from a different perspective.

Ica Dresden Folding

Mechanics on a Glass Plate

Model: Ica Dresden folding bellows camera with top-dial Compur shutter (D.R.P.)
Era: 1910s - 1920s (Germany)

Another precious heirloom, surviving to this day with its leather marked by time and an unexpected surprise for a century-old object: the Compur shutter still responds to manual cocking and fires with Swiss precision.

Before the German firm Ica (Internationale Camera Actiengesellschaft) was absorbed into the Zeiss Ikon giant in 1926, it was the benchmark in Dresden for portable precision cameras. This model didn't shoot on modern plastic film rolls, but on flat glass plates inserted from the back.

It has a fascinating technical aesthetic: the lens standard glides on two metal rails for focusing and even integrates a foldable steel-wire sports finder, used for composing shots on the fly at eye level.

More than a camera, it is an optical field instrument that perfectly retains the flavour of photography's pioneers.

Minolta Hi-Matic 7s

Where It All Began

Model: 35mm rangefinder camera with Rokkor-PF 45mm f/1.8 lens and CLC exposure system
Era: 1966 (Japan)

The very first camera I laid my fingers on as a young boy. It was the household camera, the one that accompanied every holiday, every party, and family memories imprinted on film.

Today, its mechanism has seized and it no longer shoots, but parting with it is unthinkable. There are objects that cease to be mere tools and become guardians of moments; perhaps not everyone feels this visceral connection with objects, but on these shelves, it holds a place of honour.

In the mid-1960s, the Hi-Matic series was Minolta's flagship for demanding amateurs. This "7s" featured the celebrated Rokkor f/1.8 lens—fast, sharp, and made of heavy real glass—coupled with the CLC (Contrast Light Compensator) system, a novelty for the time with two cadmium sulphide cells designed to prevent reading errors in backlit conditions. Heavy, entirely metal, and with a mechanical advance lever on top, it represents the exact transition towards modern photography.

Even sitting motionless on its shelf, it continues to recount all the stories it has seen pass before its lens.

Polaroid 1000 Land Camera

Instant Colour at Home

Model: Polaroid 1000 Land Camera (for SX-70 integral film)
Era: 1977

Another irreplaceable companion to family memories, as well as a piece of industrial design history. Impossible not to recognise at first glance: the rigid two-tone plastic body, the bright red shutter button, and the iconic central rainbow stripe, which became the very symbol of instant photography in the collective imagination.

It arrived in Europe under the name "1000", while in the US it was known as the OneStep. It was the camera that truly popularised the SX-70 film invented by Edwin Land: no complex settings or millimetric focusing, you just framed and pressed the red button. The internal motorised rollers spat out the photo with a characteristic mechanical whir, letting you witness the chemical magic of colours slowly coming to life in your hands.

A pop, democratic, and instant object that defined an era and retains its visual energy completely intact today.

Asahi Pentax K1000

The Proving Ground for Film

Model: Pentax K1000 with SMC Pentax-A 28mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens
Era: Introduced in 1976 (Japan)

After so many cameras sitting on shelves to be admired as historical pieces, this one arrived at the bench to do exactly what it was born for: to go out and shoot. I recently sought it out and acquired it, in perfect working order, with the specific idea of dedicating it to analogue black and white photography, pairing it with a vintage set of coloured optical filters (yellow, orange, red) to tame the skies, emphasise clouds, and boost the contrast between light and shadow.

The K1000 is a legend for anyone who loves essential mechanics. In the 1970s and 80s, it schooled generations of photographers: no automation, no displays or programmed modes. It solely features a needle exposure meter in the viewfinder, powered by a tiny button cell; if the battery dies, the mechanical shutter continues to fire at all speeds without batting an eyelid.

Paired with the compact 28mm, it is a little metal tank: solid, immediate, and honest, designed for those who want to decide every single parameter before pressing the shutter release.

Antique wooden desktop stereoscope by Unis-France with adjustable lenses and glass slides

Unis-France Stereoscope

Memories on Glass

Object: Walnut desktop stereoscopic viewer with adjustable lenses (Unis-France, Stéréoscopes Paris) and Ilford Alpha Lantern Plates stereoscopic slides
Era: Early 20th century (1910s - 1920s)

Unearthed at a flea market alongside its original box of glass photographic plates. Simply slotting the first slide into the groove, lifting the top flap to catch the light, and bringing my eyes to the eyepieces was enough to leave me speechless: the illusion of three-dimensionality is astounding, and the microscopic sharpness of the emulsion on glass vastly exceeds that of many modern prints.

The plates seem to chronicle the life and holidays of a Swiss family a century ago among chalets, pines, and alpine passes.

A brilliantly simple object, devoid of complex gears, yet capable of throwing wide open a genuine temporal window.

Optical intuition: Stereoscopy is the direct ancestor of modern 3D: it exploits human binocular vision. The plate holds two shots of the same scene taken simultaneously by two lenses spaced at interpupillary distance. The viewer merely isolates the visual axes: the left eye sees only the left image, the right eye only the right one. The brain fuses the two flat frames into a single three-dimensional space, perceiving true depth and the distance between people, trees, and stone walls. Turning the bakelite side wheel focuses the carriage, adjusting the vision with the precision of an optical bench.

Eumig P8 Imperial

Light, Sound, and Dust

Model: 8mm film cinematic projector (Eumig P8 Imperial)
Era: Late 1950s / early 1960s (Austria)

Another love-at-first-sight flea market find, entirely in heavy metal with its magnificent crinkle-finish industrial paintwork. Incredibly, the motor still turns and the lamp still answers the call.

To be honest, I’ve never loaded it with a real reel of film, but sometimes you don't need a projection to time-travel: just turning it on in the dark in the workshop is enough. Hearing the constant hum of the motor and the rhythmic beating of the claw, seeing the warm beam of light slice through the room and stamp itself white on the wall, and watching the dust motes dance illuminated in the cone of light... it contains all the pure poetry of old-fashioned cine-camera mechanics.

The Viennese firm Eumig revolutionised post-war home cinema with the P8 series, creating robust, accessible machines built like precision instruments. The Imperial version was designed to ensure smooth, steady running, with spool arms that fold compactly against the body for transport.

A masterpiece of die-casting and analogue electromechanics, where flipping a switch is enough to instantly recreate the smoky, magical atmosphere of an old neighbourhood cinema.

Fermovil Super 8

The Home Editing Bench

Object: Manual Super 8 film viewer / editor (Fermovil)
Era: Late 1960s / 1970s

Today it is an entirely anachronistic object with no practical daily function, but sitting on the shelf next to the Eumig P8 projector, it finds its perfect match.

There is something about the proportions of this instrument that immediately catches the eye: the crinkle metal finish matching the aesthetic of the cine-amateur era, the two cantilevered metal hand-cranks to advance the film frame by frame, and that small curved screen with an anti-glare hood that looks like a miniature television.

They simply don't make objects with this visual character and build solidity anymore.

Before digital computer editing, cutting and splicing scenes from family films required a desktop editor like this one. The film was loaded onto the spool, threaded through the guides, and advanced manually by turning the cranks: inside, a small bulb and a synchronised rotating prism projected the individual frames from behind the frosted screen. It allowed you to stop exactly on the frame to be cut, mark it, and splice it with glue or adhesive tape. A pure analogue workbench, made of patience, fingers on film, and manual rhythm.

Antique wind-up gramophone with an emerald green horn and solid wood base

The Horn Gramophone

Mechanical Music

Object: Hand-cranked gramophone with a painted sheet-metal morning glory horn and solid wood case with applied ornaments
Era: Early decades of the 20th century (compatible with 78 rpm shellac records)

I was strolling among flea market stalls when an unmistakable melody from another era rang out through the air: «Voglio vivere così... col sole in fronte». I followed that warm, scratchy voice until I stood before this large emerald-green horn. At that moment, the price didn't matter: it had to come home with me.

After its restoration, seeing and hearing it spin on the bench holds a magnetic quality. No one who hears it play live can fail to be amazed by the physical presence of the sound.

Among the records that accompany it is a French track, «Paris c’est trop grand pour moi»: you just wind the spring, drop the needle, and close your eyes to instantly find yourself sitting at the outdoor tables of a Parisian bistro along the Seine, at the dawn of the last century.

The magic of this instrument lies in the absolute absence of electricity: there are no cables, transistors, or powered speakers. The internal motor is entirely a clockwork spring, hand-wound via the side crank and governed by a centrifugal ball regulator that keeps the platter spinning steadily at 78 revolutions per minute. The groove etched into the shellac vibrates a metal needle, which transmits the movement to an ultra-thin membrane in the soundbox diaphragm. That tiny vibration of air is then channelled into the metal tonearm and explodes outward through the bell of the horn, which acts as a natural acoustic amplifier purely through the geometry of its volumes.

Pure sonic engineering, sculpted in metal and wood.

Telefunken Concerto Stereo

The Warm Voice of Valves

Object: Tabletop valve radio receiver (Telefunken Concerto Stereo)
Era: Early 1960s (Germany / built under license)

Today it has primarily become a magnificent piece of furniture, but it continues to work perfectly and is living proof of the classic urban legend: no matter where you turn the dial, it seems to tune into Radio Maria with almost exclusive stubbornness.

When it arrived at the bench, time had yellowed its surfaces; following careful restoration and deep cleaning, the trim and keys returned to that warm, bright cream colour typical of period plastics and bakelite, contrasting perfectly with the polished dark walnut of the cabinet and the woven front grille cloth.

Beneath the rhomboid Telefunken logo and the cursive Concerto script, this radio houses the pinnacle of valve technology before the advent of transistors. The front panel is a geographical map of post-war Europe: the silk-screened glass dial lists cities and capitals (Milan, Rome, Paris, Stuttgart, Prague) to be locked onto by turning the flywheel knob, assisted by the quintessential emerald-green "magic eye" that narrows to indicate perfect tuning. The solid wood acoustic chamber delivers that round, deep, and velvety sound that no small modern speaker can replicate.

1970s Space Age spherical transistor radio in black and white plastic on a conical base

Space Age Spherical Radio

The Lottery Prize

Object: Spherical tabletop transistor radio with adjustable conical base
Era: 1970s (peak Space Age era)

Won as a prize in a village lottery, probably fished out of the back stock of some local shopkeeper who didn't know what to do with it anymore.

It might not command a high financial value on the collector's market, but it landed right in the right hands. Finding such an object among village fair prizes has that surreal flavour of things that happen by chance: just setting it on a shelf makes it clear that, formally speaking, it is a small injection-moulded plastic sculpture that instantly captures the eye.

In the 1970s, the space race and radical design infected every everyday object, retiring rectangular wooden boxes in favour of organic, atomic, and spherical shapes.

This "eye" or "space helmet" radio is the essence of that season: a two-tone sphere cut at 45 degrees, resting on its conical cradle so it can be angled at will. The black front dome gathers everything needed with millimetric cleanliness: the perforated circular grille for the speaker, the side dial for volume, and the top tuning disc that runs flush with the shell's curvature. Pure lines, glossy plastic, and zero frills: Space Age industrial design concentrated in the palm of a hand.

Felt & Tarrant Comptometer

Direct-Key Mechanical Calculation

Object: Full-keyboard mechanical desktop calculator (Comptometer Model J or similar series manufactured by Felt & Tarrant, Chicago)
Era: 1920s – 1930s

I noticed it on a flea market stall without having the slightest idea of what it was at first glance. The copper-coloured metal casing, the embossed Art Nouveau friezes on the flanks, and that dense forest of numbered stems and buttons screamed "pure mechanics" from every angle: for a negligible sum, it was impossible to leave it there.

Brought into the workshop and studied up close, it turned out to be a working Comptometer. A few original keys were missing, lost over a century of life; rather than hunting for unobtainable period spares, I measured the stems and remodelled the keycaps in CAD, 3D printing them in electric blue. An unabashedly contemporary intervention that doesn't mask the repair, but restores the machine to full working order.

Invented by Dorr E. Felt at the end of the nineteenth century, the Comptometer was the first truly commercially successful direct-key calculator worldwide.

Unlike normal calculators of the era, where after entering the digits you had to pull a heavy side crank to execute the operation, here the calculation is instantaneous: simply pressing the key provides the energy needed to drive the internal gears and immediately update the numeric windows on the front.

Expert operators, known at the time as "comptometrists", would strike multiple keys simultaneously at astonishing speeds, playing the machine like an accounting piano.

The small lever on the right does not calculate: it serves to reset the totaliser to zero with a sharp pull before the next tally. A masterpiece of kinematics and heavy horology encased in a steel box.

Vintage IMCA pinwheel mechanical calculator with slider levers and hand crank

IMCA Mechanical Calculator

The Charm of Sliders and Pinwheels

Object: Pinwheel mechanical desktop calculator with slider inputs (IMCA, Made in Italy)
Era: Circa 1950s

It has always been around the house, for as long as I can remember, and no one in the family has ever been able to explain where it came from or who originally owned it. A silent, mysterious presence that nevertheless, I am certain, dug deep into me, leaving its mark and profoundly influencing the person I am today and the way I look at mechanics.

There is something hypnotic about touching these machines: setting the numbers by sliding the levers along the combs, turning the main crank, and watching the result appear in the lower mechanical windows. From a perceptual standpoint, moving levers and gears to obtain a mathematical operation seems, paradoxically, a far more complex constructive miracle than an invisible modern electronic chip: it is all the tangible beauty of analogue kinematics.

The acronym IMCA identified one of post-war Italy's engineering benchmarks in precision office mechanics, dedicated to building robust calculators for accountants and engineers.

The heart of this machine is based on the pinwheel principle (the Odhner system): pushing down a numbered lever causes an equivalent number of metal pins to pop out inside the drum. When you turn the crank 360 degrees clockwise, the pins mesh with the rollers on the lower carriage, executing an addition (or repeated multiplication); turning it anticlockwise turns the operation into a subtraction or division. The movable carriage clicks along the base to manage tens, hundreds, and thousands.

No batteries, no displays: just pure steel machined to tenths of a millimetre, transforming a physical gesture into mathematical logic.

Triumph 1217

Electronic Calculation in Green Phosphor

Object: 12-digit electronic desktop calculator (Triumph-Adler 1217)
Era: Late 1970s (Germany / Japanese manufacture for the Triumph-Adler group)

Found at a flea market for the symbolic price of an espresso. Resisting it was impossible: the colour scheme of the two-tone casing combined with contrasting keycaps—bright orange for clear, warm red and turquoise for the primary functions—carries an overwhelming visual character.

Once plugged into the mains and tested to confirm it was in full working order, it earned a permanent spot on the desk right alongside the modern computer I use every day. It is remarkable how, for quick calculations on the fly, it remains surprisingly faster, more ergonomic, and far more tactilely rewarding to use than the Windows calculator app: the long travel of the mechanical switches and the positive return under the fingertips are unmatched.

The true magic of this machine lies in its VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display). Before the reign of dull, reflective grey LCDs, desktop business calculators illuminated digits with their own teal glow, generated by hair-thin heated filaments emitting electrons onto phosphor-coated anodes in a sealed vacuum. The figures glow vividly and three-dimensionally behind the tinted filter, delivering immediate legibility and contrast.

The Triumph brand (part of the historical union with Germany's Adler) built workhorses engineered to grind through long accounting sessions without straining the operator's eyes or hands: a seamless intersection between the dawn of digital electronics and the rugged integrity of desktop industrial design.

Brionvega Aster 20

The Rescued Cathode-Ray Sculpture

Object: Portable black-and-white television on a swivel base (Brionvega Aster 20, design by Mario Bellini)
Era: 1968 / early 1970s (Italy)

Literally saved a heartbeat before being tipped into the skip by someone who saw it only as an obsolete, bulky dust-collector. It is living proof of the old adage: one person's rubbish is another's irreplaceable treasure.

Seeing a design icon of this calibre risk the landfill breaks your heart, but seeing it thoroughly cleaned and sitting proudly on its pedestal brings immense satisfaction. The burnt-orange bodywork, the curved dark flush-mounted screen, and that unusual wire handle sculpted from spring steel immediately lift it from an everyday domestic appliance into a piece of pop art.

Penned in 1968 by the master of industrial design Mario Bellini for Brionvega, the Aster 20 is a milestone of the Italian school, preserved in permanent museum design collections worldwide. Bellini did not merely draft a container for a cathode-ray tube; he sculpted a dynamic plastic volume:

The tapered cone silhouette: The rear cabinet slopes gently inwards to disguise the physical depth of the CRT neck, leaving the smoked acrylic faceplate as the undisputed focal point.
The integrated control console: The perforated speaker grille, dials, and vertical channel push-buttons are set directly into the black fascia alongside the tube, sketching the profile of a mirrored letter "B".
The chrome swivel pedestal: Allows the display to glide and tilt toward the viewer, pioneering the concept of responsive domestic technology designed to move around human living spaces.

Casio Digital Diary

The Silicon Spark

Object: Clamshell pocket electronic organiser (Casio Digital Diary, SF series)
Era: Late 1980s (Japan)

Purchased by my father back in the day, perhaps with the same enthusiasm of someone today buying the latest flagship phone only to end up sending a few text messages. To my young eyes, however, it was an absolute revelation.

Far more than a simple electronic rolodex for phone numbers, it was an open gateway to the future. The snap-open clamshell case, the tactile membrane keypad with flush-touch keys, the bright accents of magenta, cyan, and yellow running beneath the dot-matrix screen, and that tiny black cursor blinking quietly against the olive-green liquid-crystal panel.

Tinkering with it, typing strings of text, and exploring its menus struck a definitive spark: that was where my lifelong fascination with electronics, circuits, and computing took root.

It ended up storing very few actual phone numbers, but it mapped out my path permanently.

In the late 1980s, long before PDAs or pocket computers hit the mainstream, Casio's Digital Diaries brought personal data management out of corporate offices and into everyday pockets for the very first time.

Enclosed in a slim, featherweight shell, it packed a full QWERTY layout, a dedicated numeric keypad, a telephone directory, a scheduler with audible alarms, and a calendar. There were no spinning hard drives or floppy discs: an ultra-low-power microcontroller paired with a few kilobytes of battery-backed CMOS RAM was all it took to carry a pocket-sized digital archive wherever you went.

A diminutive monument to the transition from the paper notepad to solid-state silicon.

Original grey Nintendo Game Boy DMG-01 alongside a green Game Boy Pocket and Super Mario Land cartridge

Nintendo Game Boy & Game Boy Pocket

The Grey Brick

Objects: Nintendo Game Boy (DMG-01, 1989) and Game Boy Pocket (green edition, 1996) with Super Mario Land game cartridge
Era: Late 1980s / mid-1990s (Japan)

For anyone who grew up straddling the 1980s and 1990s, this is not just a gaming console: it is part of our DNA.

The vibrant green Pocket unit was a cherished gift that became the faithful partner of endless afternoons and long road trips, head bowed low over the screen.

The original off-white model—the legendary "DMG-01 brick"—was a recent flea market stroke of luck: discovered in immaculate cosmetic order and fully operational. Leaving it behind on that stall was never an option.

Powering it on, slotting the cartridge home with that distinct mechanical snap, and greeting that crystalline startup chime instantly turns the clock back to childhood.

Conceived by the visionary mind of Gunpei Yokoi, the Game Boy conquered the portable console wars through a fiercely contrarian design approach: the philosophy of lateral thinking with withered technology.

While rivals rolled out power-hungry backlit colour panels that drained six batteries in two hours, Nintendo deliberately opted for a reflective, four-shade pea-green STN dot-matrix LCD. The payoff was over thirty hours of endurance on four standard AA cells, all housed within an indestructible thick plastic shell fitted with a cross directional pad and two burgundy buttons that offered flawless tactile feedback.

The subsequent Pocket revision refined the envelope: a slimmer waistline, a sharper high-contrast display, and just two AAA cells.

A triumph of engineering pragmatism that permanently redefined handheld entertainment.

If these mechanisms fascinate you or you have a vintage piece whose engineering story you would like to share, get in touch to talk shop.

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