August Semmendinger

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

August Semmendinger (April 9, 1820 – August 6, 1885) was an American inventor and maker of photographic equipment, best known for the Excelsior Wet Plate Camera.

He was born in Bad Urach, Germany, and emigrated to the United States, arriving on July 6, 1849, aboard the Columbia with his wife Magdalene and his young daughter Alvina (also listed in records as Alwine). They settled in New York City, where he worked as a cabinetmaker at 9 Elizabeth Street, then as a box maker at 40 Forsyth Street, and soon began making cameras at 144 Elizabeth Street.

Semmendinger started making cameras in 1859 and claimed to be the first to manufacture “photographic apparatus.” He produced cameras in New York City at 410–412 West 16th Street and became an early camera designer, earning several U.S. patents. His patents included:
- February 21, 1860 (No. 27,241): Photographic Apparatus for taking successive exposures on the wet plate
- August 7, 1860 (No. 29,523): Camera
- In the early 1870s (No. 145,020): Photographic Plate-Holders with his “Celebrated Silver Double Corners”
- March 31, 1874 (No. 149,255): Camera-Stands

By the early 1870s he moved his family and business across the Hudson River to Fort Lee, New Jersey. He displayed his work at the Fifth Cincinnati Industrial Exposition in 1874 and won a bronze medal at the 43rd exhibition of the American Institute of the City of New York for his Elevated Camera Stand with double Swing Back Camera Box. He later exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

By 1882 his factory stood on Gerome Avenue (formerly Eickhoff Street) in Fort Lee, making him a leading local employer. His mammoth wet-collodion “Mammoth plate” camera was heavy but used for remote landscape photography, and the design included a cupboard-like space under the lens, which many found novel.

Semmendinger married Magdalene Kinney, and they had eight children: Theodore, Alvina (Alwine), Roland, Guido, Clara, Aloise, August, and Pythagoras. He died in Fort Lee on August 6, 1885, and his sons carried on the photography business. Advertisements for Semmendinger products appeared in various contemporary sources.