The First Camera Dolly, 1936
In the patent application, this is referred to as a “camera carriage” and as you can see, it has only three wheels. Designed by Victor Raby and made by Studio Equipment Company, these are now rare items and only a couple of these are still around. One of the survivors is shown below under a GE Iconoscope camera from WRGB and is located with the camera at the GE Museum in Schenectady NY. By early 1937, Fearless Camera Corp had introduced the four wheel Panoram dolly which was the preferred model. Television was still in the infancy stages so most customers were movie studios, but the WRGB crew has to be credited for being innovative.
Raby was also a producer of camera blimps for the Bell & Howell 2709 and Mitchell 35mm cameras in the late 1920’s and early 30’s when sound movies were gearing up.
it would make sense that a bigger stronger platform would be needed for a Blimped 35mm camera. The early TV cameras were probably lightweight by comparison.
I have Raby dolly #402 all original unmodified condition. It looks just like the #505 used on Star Wars without the sideboards. I would love to know what movies it was used on in the past. We use it in our studio daily as a great solid camera mount.