Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/07/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Marc James Small wrote: > > These lenses were all protected by patent rights, > as were the camera designs and the lens mount designs and the rangefinder > designs and so forth. Didn't matter to the Japanese: they just stole > away, happy as bloody moonshiners at a hot mash party, delighting in the > knowledge that the Allied Control Commission had ruled that German > companies could not protect their patent rights in Japan. Period. > Aw, cut them some slack, Marc; there was a matter of postwar rebuilding to think about, and building stuff people around the world want to buy is a good way to raise cold hard cash. Beats being on the dole queue indefinitely. My dad and grandfather liked cameras, and both knew of the Zeiss, Rollei, Minox and Leica brands, but their real love was the Japanese 35mm SLR. My dad had a good-sized Exakta outfit into the '70s, but I don't recall him using it much, and it looked long-neglected. The Rollei, he'd use here and there. The Nikon F2 Photomic, on the other hand, he loved. He surely could've afforded an M4 or Leicaflex and a number of primes (that Nikon gear was expensive, and it wasn't just Ehrenreich Photo-Optical's prices, either) but for whatever reason, just wasn't interested. Jeff PS: Whatever became of EPOI's operations? And for that matter, what's the story behind Honeywell/Pentax and Bell & Howell/Mamiya?