Jenne Camera Manufacturing

C.R. Jenne moved his company—Jenne Camera Mfg. Co.-- to Fort Wayne in 1892 and manufactured the Solar Rayon. This was a combination sun or lamp sketching camera, “designed for use of both professional and amateur artists of any one doing any kind of drawing, painting or enlarging small pictures to life-size. The Solar Rayon is made in four different sizes, the largest size being capable of use as a magic lantern, as a sketching camera, as a bromide painting camera, and as a photographic camera, and in each of these performances it has no equal on the market.”

Smaller sizes were used for sketching only and were operated only by the sun. A third size combined both a lamp and sun sketching cameras. The company produced an illustrated catalog of their products.

According to “The Industries of Fort Wayne”, published in 1895,

“The products are unquestionably the best of the kind ever invented and their usefulness is daily becoming more universally recognized.”

An illustration from the book.