National -35 sprinty c - a fascinating tale of india's first attempt at camera manufacturing

 I am always  fascinated by  vintage cameras , this camera belongs to my brother’s father – in – law , knowing my passion for photography he was gracious enough to give me so that I can shoot this as a subject . This is national -35  sprinty c  , this camera was enacted during mid 1970s in a CSIR(centre for scientific & industrial research ) facility, National Instruments, at Calcutta. The camera sports the tag, National 35 Sprinty C. It retailed for Rs 780 in 1977. The issues of India Today and Sunday carried the advertisements for the camera in their late 1970s issues.

This camera   was actually made in Germany as Regula Sprinty C  by a not so well known German camera manufacturer, King KG. When King KG found the going tough during the 1970s in its camera business due to intense competition from other manufacturers in terms of both pricing & quality, it was slowly losing interest in camera manufacturing. In 1977, the designs, tool kits and all the necessary infrastructure to produce NSP SBC was bought by National Instruments, Calcutta. There are no figures about how many units National Instruments manufactured and sold.In those days  India had a soviet style of approach towards industrial enterprises , they were named PSU(public sector units ) even though  some dozen of those PSU  are still functioning  even in today’s cut throat market economy , but national instruments camera manufacturing  project had to be aborted , one can see the  industrial ruins   for this I will recommend  this blog


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You can  see  some  interesting insights into India's only attempt at camera manufacturing by two independent photographers, Manas Bhattacharya and Madhuban Mitra.