Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/07/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Somehow I think we have been through this before. Everybody copies everybody else. Zeiss did used Taylor's triplet design to conceive their Tessar and also the early work of Goerz (Dagor). The Protar (originally called the Anastigmat) used the design of H. Schroeder's Concentric lens (1888 made by Ross in England) combined with Dallmeyer's Rapid Rectinlinear design. Yes, Zeiss was instrumental in many designs, but they did not originate "every" idea themselves. They made use of (copied part or whole) many available designs which date back many years before. Other examples include designs based on the Opic lens which originated from a modification of a Gauss-type lens. Modifications of the Opic led to the Zeiss Biotar (1927), Leitz Summar, Schneider Xenon, and Kodak Ektar F2 (1936). Incidentally, Nikon was created in 1917 by a combining 3 companies: Tokyo Keiki Seisaku-sho's optical division, Iwaki Glass Seisaku-sho, and Fujii Lens Seizo-sho) which was formed to meet the needs of the Japanese Navy. The Iwaki glass Seisaku-sho, was the glass manufacturing arm of the company. Up until WW2 several Japanese optical manufacturers did import German glass. The Japanese firm Nikon was first in Japan to make its own optical glass during the 30s. Later after WW2 was in progress, Konica and Minolta began making glass sometime in 1942. It is little known, but Nikon hired 8 German optical engineers in the late 1920s and relocated them to Japan in an attempt to develop better optics. They produced the second Japanese lens that was both designed and made in Japan, the first was Konica's Hexanon (Jena Glass). BTW, Pentax, Sigma, Tokina and others uses Hoya glass, Cosina makes its own. Yes, many Japanese lenses were copies of Zeiss designs, incuding the Nikkor 50mm (Sonnar), Konica rangefinder cameras (Planar), and several others. Some designs were modified later on for use with Japanese SLRs. It is much harder to distinguish modern lenses, especially zooms since the designs have been substantially changed with the aid of Computer programming. Peter K