Unicolor: Jingle Bell Program timer

[hjoseph7]

Anyone processing their own film knows that timing a process acurately is essential to getting good negatives. There are various Timers on the market(at least there used to be) to help you in timing your developing process. These days there are even some digital ones. Of course you can always use your watch or a stopwatch but good luck with that trying to do it in the dark. I have a couple of timers myself like the good old Grablab Timers that look like a clock. All you have to do with these is swing one of the arms for seconds and the other arm for minutes. I also have a Spiratone timer that allows you to program 3 different times for a process. But suppose you need 4 or more different times for a single process. Well Spiratone claims that you  can reprogram one of the already used times for the 4th or 5th . For example if your process requires 4 different times such as when using the R6 process for slides, once the first time expires lets say the first time was for 1 min 30 sec, you can use that slot for the for the fourth time. The second slot for the 5th  time once it is expired and so on. OK sounds good on paper. I also have a 'modern' digital timer that only cost me 15 bucks, but I'm still trying to read the broken-english manual on that one.

The other day while reading a book called "Color Printing  - from Petersens library", The author recomended the Unicolor Jingle Bell program Timer because you can program about 8 different time intervals within a 30 minute period. The author is the guy who developed the "Unicube" which is an Aid/calculator which helps in finding proper exposure and filtration when using color film and paper. I any case, to keep a long story short( I love to babble), I decided to pick up one of these "Unicolor Jingle Bell Timers" from eBay for only $16. There are a few of them selling on ebay and elsewhere as I'm writing.  These timers were manufactured way back in 1972, so I didn't think much would come out of this purchase. It finally came in the mail today with no instructions.

To my surprise, this Timer does not use electricity. No AC or DC ! it comes with a luminous dial that is marked in 30 second increments all the way up to 30 minutes and about 8 little red pegs. You use the little red pegs to mark the Time intervals or when the bell should ring during the entire process. There is a big red button under the luminous dial that you press to start the dial turning. When it reaches a red peg, the bell rings. You can stop right there if your process only requires one Time interval. However, if your process requires more Timing, then you hit the red button again to get the dial turning again until  it reaches the next peg. Then you hit the red buton to continue until the dial reaches the third, 4th, 5th peg and so on.  You can also rewind the dial to start all over...

This is ingenious ! It took me maybe 3 minutes to figure out how it works, but is it accurate ? I timed the first 10 minutes putting a red peg  right before the 2 minute mark, a red peg at  the 4 minute mark,  a red peg at the 6 minute mark and a red peg at the 10 minute mark and then checked each Time interval with a stop watch. The timer passed with flying colors !!. I got to admit that sometimes it was 1 or 2 seconds off,  but it could have been because of where I placed the peg. Unbelievable !  

[Rick Helmke]

Interesting approach and definitely different for me. I’m still using a Gralab timer that was probably new in the 70’s but it works. Nice to see something like this.

 

Rick H.