James's Light Meter Collection: Unittic Type 8
Unittic Type 8 Japan
Maker: Showa-Koden
Model: Unittic Type 8
Circa: 1962
Price (new): $8.95
Cell type: Selenium
Measure type: averaging

Showa-Koden made a number of meters, several under the "Unittic" name, of which this is one. Of course I can find nothing on it on the internet but a single photograph, but the ebook Posemetres says that it was rebadged in the USA as the Tower 9727 (sold by Sears).

I suspect this is a knock-off of the German Horvex meter, but it's just speculation. The Horvex and this Unittic both share an unusual feature: they have a separate, auxiliary selenium cell that can be plugged into the meter for low-light work. All it really does is add more sensor area, which feeds more electricity into the system and makes the needle register higher. You simply turn the calculator dial to a different position to correct for it.

Nice feature, though it would be easy to lose this auxiliary panel. This was a long-time Horvex accessory . The Japanese knew an interesting idea when they saw it and either licensed it, bought it, or used it after the patent lapsed; any of those scenarios are reasonable to me.

This one still works, of course. From the look of it I doubt it got much use.

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