Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 05:22 PM 1999-01-17 +0100, Lucien wrote: >Marc, > >Did you read this ? Thanks for pointing this out; I spend virtually no time on the Web (after all, I DO receive around 500 or more E-mails a day, and haven't much time to cruise!), so I hadn't seen it. It is a relatively straightforward account, though it leaves out a number of facts: a) The Duncan test in Tokyo does NOT seem to have been an honest comparison: it was a rigged test to convince Stateside editors that the free-lancers should be allowed to use the cheap-and-available Japanese lenses in place of their expensive-and-hard-to-get German lenses. In those days, the free-lancers didn't have access to pool equipment, so there was a hard economic motive for them to use $10 Japanese lenses in place of $150 German lenses. b) The Stateside test did not involve East German Zeiss lenses, but Zeiss-0pton lenses. Dr Bauer was apoplectic at the results, as it was his (utterly rational) position that the Japanese lenses couldn't be BETTER than the Zeiss lenses, as they were exact copies, and, hence, neither better nor worse. Pop immediately mis-quoted him, and this mis-quotation has gone down in the record books. c) Zeiss did not have a patent on "multi-coating" but, rather, on single-coating. This patent expired in 1958. Zeiss DID have patents on the lens designs which expired in 1951 to 1955. The Nikon and Canon "borrowings" occurred in 1947 to 1950, when these patents were still in effect. d) The Soviets didn't order any "hastening" of Zeiss lens designs; they merely told the East Germans that it was up to them to produce lenses for international sales if they wanted to continue to eat. There are some other minor errors. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!