Signet 35 a significant performer

The Signet 35 family -- Civilian, Army, Air Force.

Got lucky shopping at the local thrift store: Scored a really sweet Air Force version of the Signet 35 at a price that could not be avoided, and it got me thinking that maybe I should actually run some film through one of these wee beasties.

The Signet 35 is an odd duck. It replaced the Kodak 35. Sold beginning in the early 1950s, it featured a nice design and built-in rangefinder.  The Kodak 35 it replaced was a Frankenstein, with the rangefinder a clumsy add-on.

Unlike the other Signet cameras, and the Kodak 35s, it is made of cast aluminum and all-metal construction.  The others are bakelite with metal parts screwed on. It is clear this was made to be a serious camera, able to take some knocks.

U.S. Air Force version

Word on the street is that it was meant originally for the military. It was to be a simple but sturdy camera for use on the platoon level to document combat stuff that didn't need a professional. In that vein, it's small, simple, sturdy, just the thing to hand to a guy carrying a rifle and tell him to "take some snaps." Half an hour with the instruction manual and you're there.

It has a simple 4-speed-plus-B 25-300 shutter and a self-explanatory exposure calculator on the back. There are two hyper-focal marks on the focus scale. It is all designed to make picture taking as fool-proof as a higher-level camera in 1953 can make it.

As mentioned above, it came in military versions: Black anodized aluminum and leather for the Air Force, green leather/black anodized aluminum for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The civilian model, in gray leather and polished aluminum, is exactly the same camera. Production went on for a decade, so there's lots of the civilian ones around.

The military models are scarce collectibles, selling in the $600-plus range; the civilian models are less than $75 in good working order. On-line resources show how to clean the usually-hazy viewfinder and revive an aged balky shutter.

U.S. Army Signal Corps version

They're pretty cameras.  The 1950s design is subdued and clean, with big knobs to wind the film and fire the shutter. The controls are all easy to use even with gloves. It fits in the hand comfortably, with a nice rounded form and good heft to help hold it steady. At the same time, it is compact, solid, easy to carry in a pocket or bag.

Is it any good?  That all depends on the lens.

The old Kodak 35s -- both with and without rangefinder -- had a Kodak "anastigmat" lens, which is a simple lens that does OK, I guess. You get pictures. They're nothing to write home to mother about as far as definition, sharpness go. For snaps to put in the album, they're fine.

Kodak 35 RF

The Signet 35 has a 44mm Ektar. Very cool.

Ektar lenses were Kodak's premium optics, the top of the line, pro grade, carefully made and installed.  They are similar to the Zeiss Tessar, which may or may not mean anything to you. All you need to know is that Leitz, Zeiss and, yes, Kodak, all used the Tessar formula to make really wonderful optics. Many still do. I have seen this particular Ektar compared to the legendary Leitz Elmar.

So I loaded a roll of Kodak Plus-X (which is now discontinued but was being sold when these cameras were) into my civilian model. I grabbed a light meter and set out.

I wandered down some new-to-me streets here in Ogden -- Lincoln over near 28th Street, then over around by the LDS temple down on 22nd Street. The dog and I just rambled, snapping this and that. We finished on Two-Bit street taking random street scenes just to burn the rest of the roll.

Gotta tell ya: Very impressed.

The first print I made was of this 1970s Chevy (Impala?)  that the owner said he's owned for more than 40 years.  It's more-or-less restored, he's very proud of it, and it looked real nice.  I promised not to put it on eBay as I took a shot.

I got very excited as this print came up in the developer and I took it out of the fix -- I'd focused on the back bumper and it's really clear and sharp. Tonal rendition is as much the film as the lens, but the image is crystal clear and, as I said, very sharp.  The negative would go larger than 8 by 10 inches easily. I would rate this image beside one shot with one of my Leicas.

Same with the other prints, which I scanned for this blog: The negatives were a bit dense, which tells me the shutter speeds on my example are probably running a bit slow after 65 years, but making prints was no problem and they were all very good. The focus is very accurate, the images are very sharp.

I really don't like the kind of viewfinders these and many others of that era have, including the screw-mount Leicas.  They're a simple look-through optic with a very tiny eyepiece that you have to shove your eyeball up against.  Glasses wearers find these difficult.

There's also no bright-line or sharply defined edge inside the viewfinder, so you have use a bit of zen to tell where the edge of the frame is. I suspect the viewfinder sees a bit less than the lens does to allow for parallax error when you focus close.

That said, the triangular rangefinder spot is big and easy to see.  The final prints look to take in about what I wanted as far as what I remember seeing through the viewfinder. Once you remember to manually cock the shutter after advancing the film, shooting it is uncomplicated.

All-in-all it's a sweet little camera. It's not the camera I'd take on vacation -- I really prefer wider-angle lenses and interchangeable lenses -- but if I were forced to it would certainly do good job.

If you see one at an antique shop or flea market, give it a look, and if you find a black or green one jump on it.

Focus was accurate.

Mailboxes make interesting still-life displays

Horses on Two-Bit Street

A guy on Lincoln Ave. built this little memorial to Ogden's founding

Farr's Ice Cream is an Ogden institution

Sadie's coffee shop is also an Ogden institution

Moon Glow is dimming to nothing

Moon Glow in 2018

One of my self-appointed jobs at Union Station has been to occasionally document the state of the museum's and city's rail cars stored at Ogden Business Depot.

There's some real history out there which, sadly, is being horribly neglected.

There is a couple of wood Saltaire excursion cars slowly moldering away to kindling. The shell of a Bamberger inter-urban rail car that once ran from Ogden to Salt Lake City is rusting away.

Saltaire Excursion Car

But most sad of all, Moon Glow is pretty much done for.

Not that that's anyone's fault.  In the world of historic preservation, triage has to take place: You save what you can.  What you can't save, gets lost. Money is always the key, and saving these things takes a lot of it.

In 2012, when I still worked at the Standard-Examiner, I did a story on the status of the one surviving remnant of the Train Of Tomorrow.  You can read it here (click!). The elevator version is that Moon Glow was one of four cars built by the Union Pacific Railroad to show travelers in the US how amazing rail passenger life was going to be after World War II.

Just one problem: Automobiles.

Americans were increasingly buying and driving them, to the detriment of rails everywhere. As early as the 1920s Ogden's trolly car system was facing stiff competition, and losing. Why take a train when you can drive?

Things got worse in the 1950s. President Eisenhower admired Germany's Autobahn highways so much that he felt the US should have the same thing. Interstate highways were for defense, allegedly, and funded that way, but car drivers loved them.

So the Train of Tomorrow toured the nation in1947, amazed everyone, and then went away. GE, which built it, had trouble even selling it to a major railroad.  UP finally bought it, but it never achieved the nation glory it was aimed at.

Most of the Train of Tomorrow cars were eventually scrapped, but Moon Glow was adopted for use as an office by a scrapping yard in Idaho.  That was where some volunteers from Ogden found it.  They pulled together enough funds to bring it to Utah, and started some preservation work, but it all went south from there.

Moon Glow today.

With no long-term funding in place, each step made matters worse.  Accessories in the car were removed, stored, and lost.  Windows were taken out, stored, and lost.  Buildings that parts of the car were stored in got torn down, and the parts were lost. There was no money to preserve them, no permanent staff anywhere to monitor it.

The viewing dome today. I'm unsure if
the sign is someone's sick joke

It ended up at BDO, first stored in a building. When the building was torn down it was moved to a siding and covered in plastic.  The plastic shredded in the weather, now it sits open to vandals and weather.

Moon Glow's dream

Get the theme here?  Every step of the way it just gets worse and worse. Good intentions are one thing, but a full plan to save it, and the funds to do it, never existed.

When I visited it last week I took more pictures.  As you can see, there's not a lot left. There's a metal shell. The concrete floors are still there, but beyond that it is very efficiently gutted.  Last I heard, renovation would cost $3 million, but really, who knows? 

Moon Glow's reality

What will happen? No clue.  For 15 years Union Station and the museums were managedby the Union Station Foundation, which barely had funds to keep the doors open.  Renovation of collection objects was simply impossible.

Ogden took back management of Union Station, and the collections, a year ago. Does it have these funds?  It has more pressing problems, such as removing asbestos from the Laundry Building next to the station, or upgrading the station's 95 year-old plumbing, or renovating the 95-year-old Union Station itself.

Rusted hulks of bygone rail cars are way down on the list.

I'd much rather see the Saltaire cars saved -- it would be a lot cheaper and they have more Utah connections anyway.

Moon Glow is rail history, and maybe there's a rich guy somewhere who can afford to take it on. Absent that, though, it's time to face the inevitable.

In 1872 Women's Lib (sort of) Was the Rule

In 1872, it would appear, women in the LDS Church saw life just a teensy bit differently than the stereotypes of today.

Pro-vote?  Of course.
Equal pay for equal work? Darn right!
Equality under the law in all things?  You better believe it, buster.
Polygamy?  Well, yeah, actually.

OK, so some things are different, but it was 147 years ago and things have changed. Still, it is fascinating to see how they were back then.

I made this little discovery thanks to the efforts of the J. Willard Marriott Library's amazing historical newspapers project, which is working to get every copy of every newspaper eve published in Utah on-line, digitized. If you haven't yet discovered digitalnewspapers.org yet, stop what you are doing and go look at it now.



One of its most recent additions is the complete "Woman's Exponent," which was published from 1872 until 1914. Listed as a "semi-official" publication of the LDS Church, its goal (according to the entry in Wikipedia) to uplift women of the LDS church and to educate women about the women of the LDS Church.

You can read the entire newspaper here:  CLICK LINK.

How closely tied was it to the church?  Its first editor, Louisa Lula Greene, was the grandniece of Church President Brigham Young.

Now, as to the paper's content, as hinted above.

Consider the time: It is 1872 Utah. The state is run by Brigham Young, whose word is law. He sanctions you being made editor of a newspaper aimed at women in Utah. Do you think that you will, for one instant, print something that would not be approved by your grand uncle, let alone the rest of the community?

I bet not. It's rather unlikely.

Which tells me that the women of Utah in 1872 were a lot different in outlook, and expectations, than the women of Utah in the late 20th Century, say, the ones who worked against the Equal Rights Amendment, just to pick one example.

How so?  There's a general tone of "look how amazing women are" in the news coverage, both local and around the world. To wit:

"Springfield, Mass., has elected Miss Sarah J. Williams to be City Physician. Twelve doctors of medicine in pantaloons contended for the honor and emolument of bleeding the Springfield paupers; and wise as they were they were all beaten out of the field by a woman."

Or ponder the ill-suppressed rage in this slap at male dominance: "Society will not tolerate a woman who objects to live with a drunken, brutal husband. She married for better or for worse, and though the man becomes worse, she must pay the penalty. Mrs. Nelson, wife of Joseph Nelson, a blacksmith living near Sedalia, Mo., unable to live with her lawful husband, tried to live away from him. Society said nay. Joseph said no, and made her return. On Sunday the 17th ult. after she had returned home, he killed her. Enlightened society! Exalted husband ... or ought to be!  Happy wife, in a better world!"

But perhaps it is best said in an editorial, unsigned so presumably written by Ms. Greene, that lays out the general principles of the newspaper.



The paper doesn't advocate for women's suffrage, it says, because in Utah they already have it. In a hint that it will not oppose plural marriage, it says the paper has "no particular wrong to contend  against, inflicted up us by our husbands, fathers, brothers, or the male portion of the community; and no special claims to champion, throwing down the gauntlet against all comers...We do not propose to speak for a few of the women of Utah who with disappointed hopes or perverted minds may be disposed to rail in bitterness against the principles, honestly entertained by a whole community."

OK, so "don't rock the boat" as editorial policy.

But, in another editorial on the following page, Ms. Greene takes a more proactive tac for the rights she thinks women should have.

How about access to jobs?  Not all women have husbands to care for them, and yet society prevents them from having good paying jobs, and makes it clear this is why some women are forced into prostitution.

"She  should have the right to live, and live purely, and not be compelled by the force of custom and fortuitous circumstances to seek a living death that the physical body might be sustained. And to secure her this right, she should have access to every avenue of employment for which she has physical and mental capacity."

Equality under the law?

"She should not be held more responsible than man -- if as much -- for sexual crime. As the world goes if she sins and falls the ban of society is placed upon her, she is ostracized and driven deeper into a course of wickedness, while her partner in guilt, her tempter and destroyer, walks erect and unabashed, received, encouraged and it may be petted by those of her own sex who would spurn her as an unclean and loathsome thing. He should be held equally degraded -- more so, as more culpable, and deserving the severe penalty."



The right to vote?  They can in Utah (a right they lost with statehood), but this paper argues strongly for the right for all, a right now denied "simply because nature qualified them to become mothers and not fathers of men.

"They may own property, pay taxes, assist in supporting the government, rend their heart-strings in giving for its aid the children of  their affections, but they are denied all right to say who shall disburse those taxes, how that government shall be conducted, or who shall decide on a question of peace or war which may involve the lives of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands."

Susan B. Anthony couldn't have said it better, but a Utah Mormon woman said it in 1872.

The Woman's Exponent folded in 1914 due to financial pressures.

Of Course Racism Rode the Rails to Promontory

The Transcontinental Railroad was a massive disruption  to many populations in the American West: self-sufficient communities discovered the wonders and costs of cheap imports, crime soared as rough railroad workers roamed and plundered, and folks who "don't look like us" were suddenly everywhere.

And racism, let's be blunt here, was the norm. Newspaper accounts almost identified race except for northern Europeans. Black, Greeks, Italians and others all got their "race" mentioned. A railroad gang supervisor will describe his workers as "three Greeks, two Italians, and five whites," and not think anything is amiss at all.

Especially the Chinese.

"Celestials," as they were commonly referred to, had three strikes against them right from the get-go: They looked different, they worked harder and better, and they were willing to work cheap.

Well, I hear you saying, "no wonder they were hated. Better work and cheaper? Can't have any of that!"

Mural showing Chinese workers building Transcontinental Railroad in Ogden's Union Station

And hated they were.

Race was part of it, but so was the economic disruption they caused. Sure, they built the Central Pacific's part of the Transcontinental Railroad, but what -- you can hear the nation asking -- have you done for us lately?

In 1885 a camp of Chinese workers hired by the Union Pacific to mine coal and maintain the rails was attacked by residents of Rock Springs, Wyoming. The resulting riot left 28 Chinese dead, more injured, and the survivors fleeing into the wilderness for their lives.

Folks were asking this in May of 1869, just weeks after the railroad was finished.

On May 26, 1869, the dust had barely settled when the Deseret News ran what looks like an editorial, but that is unsigned, raising the question of what to do with all those folks from China. The arguments, pro and con, sounds surprisingly similar to debates going on in 2019.

"The completion of the great continental highway ... is likely to force the question of Chinese labor upon the attention of the country," it says. California is already dealing with it, where "many see little to hope but much to fear from the influx of the Chinese. If their views be correct, it is a peril which not only menaces California, but the whole country."

Indeed, the road of iron put every part of the nation within days' reach of the peril.

What is the danger? "They have come by thousands to California, and though driven from the mines that Americans and Europeans deem valuable, they contrive to live and save money by working in the streams and placers which the dominant race has deserted."

Unlikely to be satisfied with gold mine leavings, this article says, the Chinese "will set eastward. The force of circumstances will push it in this direction."

Statue honoring Chinese workers, Utah Railroad Museum.

And where the Chinese go, others will suffer. "The European laborer in the East will not work for less than two or three dollars a day; but the Chinaman will work for less than a dollar."

Not only that, but the Chinaman "is frugal and patient, and as industrious as a beaver. He will live where one of the so-called superior race would starve. His food is a little rice, and he eats meat but seldom. He indulges in no dissipation; but is simple, abstinent and very economical."

One would think employers would value such people. The CPRR sure did.

"The San Francisco Times says there are Chinamen who have been on that work who are better at aligning roads than many white men who have been educated in the business, and they will strike a truer line with the unassisted eye than most white men can with the use of instruments."

And so on. In a tunnel-drilling competition between gangs of Chinese and Irishmen "bets were freely made that the white men would come out winners, but at the end of the day, when the work of each party was measured, it was found that the Chinamen had burrowed further into the rock that the others and were, moreover, less fatigued."

The presence of such workers "will inevitably work a great revolution in labor," the article notes."Works will be accomplished which, without their aid, and as labor now costs, would be left unattempted. They are adept for almost any species of labor."

And yet, the article says, politicians and governments everywhere torment and discriminate against them. "Their popularity depends upon refusing them every privilite and right which other races, however profligate and worthless members of them may be, enjoy to the fullest extent."

In California, it says, "they are chased, abused, robbed and abominably maltreated by men and boys, their terror affording only amusement, and even the dogs are set upon and taught to bite them."

The article then takes an interesting turn, also paralleling debate today.

"And yet those who thus torture this race call themselves Christian," it says, "and mock and denounce them as idolators and heathens."

Deed, not example, is the key, it says, to those who wonder why the Chinese resent the way they are treated.

"Men may prate to them about American civilization, free and enlightened institutions, the spirit of progress and advanced Christianity until doomsday, but they will fail to respect or attach any value to these high-sounding phrases and professions while they are treated like wild beasts."

The article urges this course, although it does stop short of calling for actual equality.

"These Asiatics are willing to work, and work cheap at any kind of drudgery," he says. "If the Anglo-Saxon is the superior being which he affects to be, he can with safety assume the direction of this class of laborers. He can employ them to goo advantage and, instead of living a life of drudgery himself, he can cultivate his brain and direct and manage their labor to his own and their advantage."

So it's still racially-charged, but it's being nice, not mean, and that ought to count for something.

"If he treat them kindly, and pay them honestly, he will do more to convert them to his religion and ways than years of preaching with a contrary practice would do, and he need not be afraid that their degradation, vices or barbarism will hurt him."

Folks stayed afraid.  The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended immigration for decades. The Rock Springs massacre was, sadly, typical.