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The eighty-year history of the photobooth is filled with little detours and fascinating stories; one of those that has just come to our attention recently is the history of the Phototeria.

Thanks to photography historian George Dunbar, we can now learn about the story of David McCowan and his Phototeria, a late 1920s photobooth that placed a single photograph onto a photosensitive metallic disk. Dunbar tells the story in his article “The Phototeria — A Canadian Invention” in the most recent issue of Photographic Canadiana, the journal of The Photographic Historical Society of Canada.

Thanks to George for letting us know about his article, and for his permission to post the PDF on Photobooth.net and let our readers learn about it.

Phototeria photo by George Dunbar