We are an authorized, direct-from-the-publisher retailer of NEW books. Our titles are ON HAND and available for immediate shipping. What roles do the Detroit Tigers, Marilyn Monroe, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, the Smithsonian Institution, and infamous financier Michele Sindona have to play in the history of the Argus Camera Company? How many companies have a museum devoted solely to their history and also can boast of a large, thriving, worldwide collectors group? Not very many, surely. These, and many other intriguing insights into one of the major U.S. based photographic equipment suppliers are covered in depth in Argomania. The story of the Argus Camera Company and the great number of innovative (and some not so innovative) products the company made provide a tremendous insight into the American entrepreneurial spirit of the 20th Century. The history of Argus is more than a look into the business of photography. It is also a look into many of the business practices endemic to our time. Argus' founder, Charles Verschoor, did not establish an empire, as did George Eastman. Nor did he enjoy a particularly long tenure as the head of the company he founded. Unlike Oscar Barnack, he did not invent anything particularly new, yet he had a tremendous impact on the photographic industry. He revolutionized the scope of the industry, not only from a technical standpoint, but even more so from a marketing perspective. It is probably no stretch to say that if there had been no Charles Verschoor and his Argus Camera Company, there may have been no immense market for 35mm film and "miniature" photography. His Argus A was the first product in what would become a wide-ranging product line consisting of still and movie cameras, enlargers, slide projectors, and exposure meters, as well as a host of other items, numbering into the hundreds. These products are described and shown extensively through the pages of Argomania. The Argus Camera Company was one of the major factors in the American photographic industry, yet its long and storied history has been largely overlooked. And that is a shame. The Argus story deserves to be told and Argomania does just that.
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