Underwater housing with camera Herb Sampson USA Model-M-4-412 Ca. 1959-1960. The camera is a Filmo 70 DR with 1:2/12mm Elgeet Cine Navitar. This Sampson housing contains a Bell and Howell movie camera. It was initially owned by Gustav Dalla Valle, the importer for Cressi in the early 1950's. He worked at Healthways, and co founded Scuba Pro with Dick Bonin. Dalla Valle worked with Dick Anderson at Healthways during the early 1960's and eventually gave this unit to Anderson as a gift. The two men later had a falling out. Anderson formed a film company called Davana Productions Hollywood, and this Sampson unit was probably used for his underwater filming assignments. Both Gustav Dalla Valle (2000) and Dick Anderson (2004) are inductees in the ISDHF. Herb Sampson filed a description with the US Patent Office for his motion picture camera housing in April, 1959. He followed that up with a patent application in on December 7th, 1959, and the patent was awarded in February, 1960. Besides being a well balanced compact housing, Herb's design had several novel features, two of which were quite innovative for the time and both could be seen on the rear cover of the housing. Herb had a light meter installed in the window of the rear cover along with a large, easy to read scale for both distance (marked for both air and water distances) and aperture. Also, Herb had designed an optical viewfinder with the front lens element very close to the camera lens, and the rear, viewing element at the rear of the housing. This viewfinder was designed to eliminate, or minimize, the problems of parallax found in housings using a "sport finder" type aiming system. Herb went on to collaborate with motion picture star, Jon Hall, selling the housing as the Sampson/Hall SCUMPA (Self Contained Motion Picture Apparatus). The housing also allowed for an electric motor drive for the Bell and Howell D70 camera. Also in 1959, Herb filed a patent for a stabilizing device for his housing. The patent drawings showed a v-shaped set of legs with the housing at the apex. The housing could then be towed behind a boat while the stabilizer kept it at a fixed distance from the sea bed for filming large areas of the sea floor.