Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 04:25 PM 1999-01-09 +0100, Raimo Korhonen wrote: >OK, Marc but I have seen a picture of lens calculations by Zeiss (Tessar, >if I remember correctly) and it was about 3 feet high stack of A4īs. I >think that after the WW II most of those ended in Russia. So it is not so >easy to get exact copy by simply taking the thing apart. With due respect! Not quite. What you probably saw was the famous advertisement Zeiss put out in the 1930's showing the CALCULATIONS leading to the formula for the 2/50 Sonnar. The actual design is around six or eight lines long -- lens surface figure, and glass type. What the Japanese firms, especially Canon and Nikon, avoided was the work in producing those three feet of calculations. It took the brilliant Ludwig Bertele four years to produce the 2/50 design: the Japanese simply short-circuited this by stealing the formula, once they were assured by the Allied Control Commission that Zeiss would not be permitted to sue them. The Jena archives, incidentally, are very much still at Jena, not in Russia. These archives are terribly disorganized from five decades of Communist inefficiencies, but, they are there, nonetheless. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!