Camera Lucida around 1899

Camera Lucida around 1899

The camera lucida is used to project a virtual image onto a piece of paper so that it can be traced.

Camera lucida, an artist’s aid,  is signed Kolesch & Co.
Kolesch & Co. traced its history back to Edmund March Blunt, who opened a chart and instrument store in New York in 1811. Blunt’s sons, Edmund and George William, opened a similar store in 1824, and began trading as E. & G. W. Blunt.
In the early 1850s the Blunts began offering surveying instruments of their own manufacture. The firm became Blunt & Nichols in 1866, and Blunt & Co. in 1868.
In the 1870s the business passed to German immigrants: Eckel & Imhoff, and then F. Eckel.
Heinrich Adolph Kolesch (1855-1903) bought the firm in 1885.