When were metal plate cameras first marketed?

[darinwc]

I just received a Voigtlander Bergheil plate camera.
It seems to me that it is much more precise and a more advanced camera than the wooden plate cameras of earlier decades. The Bergheil must have been a technological marvel of it's time. I know not all the metal plate cameras had as many features.
It occurred to me that these must have been quite revolutionary for their time. A technological leap that rivaled other revolutionary cameras such as the Contax/Leica, Nikon F, etc.

When were these metal field cameras first made and marketed?
What was the first?
It would be very interesting to read some early reviews or discussions about them.

 

[Nodda Duma]

My guess is that you started seeing similar features with contemporaries of the Kodak Vest Pocket Camera, right after the turn of the century, ~1905-1910 timeframe. It's actually a pretty segway into how technology accelerated in the early 20th century.

Camera production and development would have been interrupted more or less by WW1. The post-war production slump would have spurned fierce competition and innovative features similar to what happened pre- and post-WW2 (compare products of the '50s to products of the '30s). Companies were competing for less dollars to sustain larger work forces (even after letting wartime temp workers go), and had to work harder to maintain the income that shareholders or owners expected...otherwise they shrank or went out of business.

If they were smart, companies with big wartime production contracts would have had significant capital to invest in new products after the war. Camera manufacturers -- cutting edge consumer technology then just as now -- were no exception. Combining this with new production experience and tooling, and learning how their products worked out in real-world environments, and you begin to gain insight into how The Great War (and WW2) accelerated the development of new technology even for products not directly related to warfare...and ultimately resulted in the metal folders much more modern than the cameras of 20 years prior.