File:Jones with heliograph 1916 by G Allen Burrows.jpg

This six-bladed shutter was introduced by the US Signal Service in 1905. By pressing the lever at the side, the leaves were opened and closed to create flashes from the sunbeam reflected onto the shutter by the mirror at left.

The circular object here is probably one of the two leather endcaps of the "skeleton case" used to transport the pair of tripods after the shutter and mirror bar were removed.

This appears to be the wooden mirror box, with the leather handle projecting above it in this view. It is easier to detect in the larger versions of this photo.

This is the standard double-tripod US Signal Service heliograph, model of 1905, with azimuth screws at both ends of the mirror bar, and the six-bladed shutter. The US used a separate tripod for the shutter, so that the working of the shutter did not disturb the mirror alignment. This model was used by US Forest Service rangers from 1909 into the 1940s and 1950s, though usage dropped rapidly in the 1930s as portable radios were introduced into the US Forest Service.

This mirror is 4.5 inches on a side, and rests on an elevation/azimuth mount with vernier screw adjustments. The hole in the center is used as a rear peep sight for aligning the mirror bar, and as a shadow caster for aligning the sunbeam. See the references in the description for more detail.

This vertical bar was the sighting rod. To align the heliograph on target, one looked through the hole in the mirror from the rear, and aligned the pointed tip of the aiming rod on the target by turning the mirror bar in azimuth about the tripod, and elevating or lowering the sighting rod itself. Then one flipped up a disk that was centered on the pointed aiming rod tip, and adjusted the mirror in azimuth and elevation until the shadow in the center of the sunbeam created by the central mirror hole was centered on the disk. At that point, the sunbeam was aligned with the target, though it had to be adjusted every 30 seconds or so because of the motion of the sun.

Each wooden tripod leg was a 60 deg wedge of a circle, so that the interleaved legs of the two tripods formed a cylinder that was capped by the leather cups of the skeleton case for transport. The tips of the legs were covered with pointed metal caps, so they could be pressed into the ground to form a rigid platform for the mirror bar.