913
used as sales to colonists who wanted to send studies
of Maori heads to friends overseas. The mix and match
of European costuming with traditional clothing and
artifacts certainly suggests a very impromptu series of
studio encounters.
William Main
MCKELLEN, SAMUEL DUNSEITH
(1836–1906)
S.D. McKellen was born in Ireland in 1836 and a year
later the family emigrated to Manchester where Samuel
was to spend most of his working life. McKellen trained
as a watchmaker and jeweller and had opened his own
business by 1861.
It was around this time that McKellen developed an
interest in photography making his own camera from
a cigar box and lens. By 1881 he had began to design
the camera that would lead one obituary to describe
him as ‘the father of the modern camera.’ The design
was made up for him by the Manchester camera maker
Joshua Billcliff which McKellen then fi eld tested and
extensively demonstrated. It was shown at the annual
exhibition of the Photographic Society in October 1884
where it was awarded a gold medal—the fi rst the So-
ciety had given for a camera. McKellen was elected to
the Society the following month, although he let his
membership lapse.
McKellen began commercial manufacture of his
camera which was sold under the Treble Patent name
and incorporated at least three of his four patents from
the same year. By 1887 the camera incorporated eight
McKellen patents. The design was based on McKellen’s
own experiences as a photographer and was intended
to be: light in weight, rigid, easily erected and folded
into a compact shape, to accept lenses of different focal
lengths, simple in construction and with a swing back
and front. The design allowed mass-production and
McKellen’s factory was was soon employing thirty-fi ve
workers and mechanised to allow this. The design was
a signifi cant development of the Kinnear camera of
1857 but incorporating the McKellens own principles.
It camera was copied by volume manufacturers such as
Thornton-Pickard against whom McKellen took legal
action and the design, from different manufacturers,
remained popular until the early 1900s.
McKellen produced a range of other photographic
equipment including a Detective hand camera which he
patented in 1888 and licensed to Marion and Company.
This camera was signifi cant for incorporating an internal
mirror for refl ecting the image on to a ground glass screen
and a roller blind shutter for which he gave acknowledg-
ment to Thomas Sutton and his design of 1861.
McKellen received twenty-eight photographic pat-
ents between 1884 and 1904 but he was not a good
businessman and failed to secure his designs losing
sales to competitors. He was also under capitalised. A
move to establish a public company in 1899 and new
products failed to provide fi nancial security and by the
time of his death he was penniless and estranged from
his wife.
S.D. McKellen died on 26 December 1906 in a
Manchester hospital.
Michael PritchardSee also: Patents: Europe and the United Kingdom;
and Lenses: 2. 1860s–1880s.Further Reading
McKellen, John, “S D McKellen. Father of the Modern Camera,”
in Photographica World, 93 no. 3 (2001): 9–19.
Davies, David A., “The Manchester Camera Makers 1853–1940,”
special issue The Photographist, Winter/Spring 1986.MCLAUGHLIN, SAMUEL (1826–1914)
Irish photographer, inventorSamuel McLaughlin was a watchmaker, publisher, and
photographer; born Rathlin Island, County Antrim,
Ireland, January 28, 1826; died Los Angeles, Cali-
fornia, August 26, 1914. Born in Ireland of Scottish
parentage, Samuel McLaughlin was living in Quebec
City by the age of fi fteen. He began work as a watch
and chronometer maker, and then, after a brief period
working with a fi rm of silversmiths in New York,
became a book and periodical agent and publisher of
city directories, 1854–57. He took up photography
as an amateur, later turning professional, for a time,
in partnership with Samuel McKenney and William
Lockwood. McLaughlin produced Canada’s fi rst pho-
tographically illustrated serial publication The Photo-
graphic Portfolio: A Monthly View of Canadian Scenes
and Scenery (1858–59), a series of twelve views in and
around Quebec City, with accompanying letterpress
text. In September 1861, he was appointed the fi rst of-
fi cial “photographist” for the Canadian government and
moved to Ottawa where he remained a civil servant for
the next thirty years. Best known for his architectural
views of the construction of the Parliament Buildings
in Ottawa, McLaughlin worked as Chief Photogra-
pher for the Department of Public Works and later
the Department of Railways and Canals, producing
impressive documentation of many Canadian public
works projects, most notably wharves, timber slides
and booms, dams, and fi sh breeding works along the
Saguenay River. He was succeeded by his son Daniel
after he retired to Los Angeles, where he died.
Joan M. Schwartz