Merle Rideout had brought a hand camera with him, and was taking "snaps" of the flying machines, aloft and parked on the ground, which were continuing to arrive and take off with no apparent letup.
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"a hand camera"
When I think of 19th century cameras, I picture a thing that looks like an accordion on a tripod which the photographer mans from behind under a black cloth while holding up a bulb to light the flash and snap the picture. But apparently there were hand cameras which were basically the same thing except without the tripod. And there was no need for a black cloth because the entire thing was usually housed in a box with a nice leather handle for easy carrying.
"taking "snaps" of the flying machines"
I definitely didn't realize "roll film" was a thing by the late 1800s. But that's all due to my ignorance of the history of cameras and film and also thinking that Hollywood movies were a decent enough way to pick up that information.
"Snap" is of course a shortening of the term "snapshot," meaning a quick shot with a gun at a quickly moving target. It's easy to see how it was picked up as photography slang. As with other versions of slang used by Pynchon previously, the quotes around the slang term indicate it's a fairly new usage for 1893.
This scene with Merle Rideout taking photos of the many ships coming and going can probably fuel a critical book by somebody with a specific focus and pet peeve and also maybe hobby horse or, at the extreme possibility, a serious crotchet. But since I don't have any of those things, I'm struggling to decide what the ships coming and going might represent. Party goers speaking of some farty Renaissance sculptor, maybe?
