Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 09:01 AM 4/16/98 -0400, you wrote: >Zeiss and Leitz did threaten litigation in '54, once the Allied controls >were lifted, but by that point the damage had been done. And, of course, >the Japanese moved beyond the Zeiss patents once they recognized how >expensive their lenses were to duplicate; both Nikon and Canon developed >optics less expensive to manufacture by the middle 1950's and had ceased >directly copying Zeiss designs. Thanks for the historical perspective. And as has been reported in many places, it was around the early 50s that Nikon was discovered by David Douglas Duncan and he dropped his Leica lenses. (Some of them, anyway). But Popular Photography takes that short period of history to mean the Japanese lenses are still better than Leicas. Hmmm....maybe they need to get out of the office more often. :-) ========== Eric Welch St. Joseph, MO http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch The gene pool could use a little chlorine.