Charles Hanford applies stagecraft in WWI camouflage

The American promoter and showman Phineas T. Barnum was born in 1810. He was immensely successful and widely known by 1859, the birth year of Charles B. Hanford, who would in time himself become a leading actor in Shakespearean plays. 

Hanford’s middle name was Barnum, not in homage to Phineas T. (although they may have been related) but because Barnum was his mother’s family’s name.

Hanford died in 1926. Near the end of his life (as reported in obituaries), while World War I was ongoing, he collaborated with Thomas A. Edison “in planning methods of camouflage for ships and land operations of the army, his stagecraft lending itself readily to this work.” In earlier blog posts, we've talked about various aspects of Edison's involvement in WWI camouflage.

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE IN CLOTHES PASSES in The Cleveland Press, March 18, 1918—

There’s camouflage in warfare,
But for men whose forms are lean,
In spring styles stores are showing
No camouflage is seen.

“Conserve” is the the edict
Throughout the USA
And that applies to clothing
In quite a funny way.

For tailors have elected,
In making suits this spring,
To make lines they call “skeleton”
The fashionable thing.

Th shoulders have no padding,
The waistline’s pulled in tight,
No bit of cloth unneeded
Is anywhere in sight.

So if you’re thin, flat chested,
Or your shoulder blades are round,
Conceal the fact, you cannot,
To show, it’s surely bound.

But there, don’t look so gloomy,
Just think what you would do
If tailors had decided
To conserve in trousers too.

They might have made it rompers
Like children wear in play.
Or maybe trunks and long hose
Like they wore in Shakespeare’s day.

But we’re not the ones to grumble
When all is said and done,
For we’ll go in Injun blankets
If ’twill help to lick the Hun. 

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

camouflage / his master looks exactly like our egg man

Above W. Heath Robinson, "Camouflage vs. camouflage" from his invention series. Public domain. 

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John Lewis (who was himself a WWII camoufleur), Heath Robinson: Artist and Comic Genius (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p 36—

When working in the garden he [British illustrator W. Heath Robinson] was in the habit of wearing the most dreadful old clothes and because of this was more than once mistaken for the gardener. On one occasion an artist dressed in a pale violet-grey suit, with a black velvet collar, called on the Robinsons. He saw Will digging in the garden and shouted across to him: “Is your master in, my man?” “I’Il go and see,” muttered Will and disappeared indoors, only to appear a moment later in a tidier jacket and with his hair brushed, to make himself known to the other artist. What the outcome of this was, I do not know. In his autobiography he tells this tale and gives the unnamed visitor the soubriquet of Renée de Boudoir.

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Max Eastman, Great Companions (New York: Farrar Straus and Cudahy, 1942)—

[In his later life, American philosopher John Dewey] moved out on Long Island, and preserved his contact with reality by raising eggs and vegetables and selling them to the neighbors… [He received an urgent order one day] from a wealthy neighbor for a dozen eggs, and the children being in school, he himself took the eggs over in a basket. Going by force of habit to the front door, he was told brusquely that deliveries were made in the rear. He trotted obediently around to the back door, feeling both amused and happy. Some time later, he was giving a talk to the women's club of the neighborhood, and his wealthy customer, when he got up to speak, exclaimed in a loud whisper: "Why, he looks exactly like our egg man!"  

iowa trickster makes photographic camouflage / 1919

Antonius J. Viken, Waterloo IA / 1919

Above These three photographs were a reader’s contribution to Popular Mechanics, where they were published in Vol 31 Issue 2 (1919) of that magazine. The photographs were taken by A.J. Viken of Waterloo, Iowa, as examples of makeshift camouflage. Here is the text he submitted—

Practical examples of “camouflage” are shown in these three photographs. In the upper left-hand corner the man has adopted an effective, if somewhat strenuous means of making his appearance blend with his surroundings [by standing on his head, his belt line coincides with the horizon]. To the right, the small rider on the horse’s back is almost indistinguishable against the background of sky and trees, while the lower picture shows how difficult it may be to distinguish such a striking object as a goat.

A.J. Viken (Antonius Johnson Viken) [Skinderviken] was a Norwegian-American photographer. Born in Norway on October 4, 1885, he came to the US in April 1911, and became a naturalized citizen (in Chicago) in 1924. He registered for the draft on September 12, 1918, at Waterloo, where he and his wife Johanna (nee Hansen) Viken lived at 1123 Mulberry Street. As a photographer, he was employed by Louis A. Wangler at 227 East 4th Street in that city. In 1919, when his humorous camouflage photographs were published, his residence was listed as Waterloo, but in later years he also lived in Sioux City IA, Chicago, Jackson Heights NY, and on Long Island, New York. He died in Nassau NY on September 26, 1959.

Among Viken’s associates was photographer and inventor Donald Cameron Biedler (1885-1943). In 1924, both men listed their residence as 864 Buckingham Place, Chicago, in the vicinity of Wrigley Field. 

Beidler was a well-known photographer of wealthy, socially prominent clients (and their children) in Chicago, and later in Manhasset, Long Island NY. Originally from Mt. Pulaski IL, Beidler was a grandson of Jabez Capps, the town's founder. In collaboration with A.J. Viken, he was also invented a special motor-driven children's portrait twin camera, called the Beidler-Viken camera (see below), which they patented in 1925. Although it consisted of two cameras, side-by-side, it was not designed to make stereoscopic images. Instead, it was operated by two photographers, one of whom maintained exact focus on the (squirming) child being photographed, while the other tripped the shutter at the opportune moment. Beidler's Chicago studio was in the Lyon and Healy Building at 64 East Jackson Boulevard, circa 1920. In 1929, he and Viken established the  Beidler-Viken Studios in Manhasset on Long Island. Fourteen years later, Beidler died of a sudden heart attack, while Viken lived until 1959. In Biedler’s obituary, his partner Viken was described as “a man highly skilled in the mechanical end of photography.”

Between the years 1925 through 1936, Antonius J. Viken and Donald C. Beider worked together on a number of technical devices related to photography, including various camera stands (1925, 1930), a camera tiltback adjustment (1931), and their Beidler-Viken camera (1931). But Viken obtained patents independently for other inventions, such as a film hanger (1926), a hood for camera finders (1929), a tripod head (1931), and a film holder and hanger (1936). In 1931, Viken also worked with a bacteriologist, acetone expert, and Chicago physician named Dr. Nathaniel Frutkow (described in a research document as “a somewhat quackish physician specializing in pneumonia”) in patenting a diagnostic table and therapeutic lamp. 

The following is a list, arranged by date, of some (probably not all) of the patented inventions that are attributed to Viken, Beider and Viken, or Viken and Frutkow. Full pdf patent documents can be found online by searching Google Patents.

Stand for camera and the like, 25Aug1925, w/Donald C. Beidler. Film hanger, 4May1926, 1,583,708. Hood for camera finders and the like, 26Nov1929, 1,737,038. Camera and camera stand, 14Jan1930, w/Donald C. Beidler, 1.743,184. Tripod, 10Mar1931, 1,795,747. Tiltback for cameras and the like, 17Mar1931, w/Donald C. Beidler, 1,796,315. Tripod head for portrait camera, 30Jun1931, 1,812,614. Diagnostic table, 15Sep1931, w/Nathaniel Frutkow, 1,823,534. Therapeutic Lamp, 15Sep1931, w/Nathaniel Frutkow, 1,823,535. Camera and the like, 24Nov1931, w/Donald C. Beidler, 1,833,668. Film holder and hanger, 21Jan1936, 2,028,262.