Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/08/14
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>At 08:21 AM 6/15/96 +0200, Gerard Captijn wrote:
>
>>The basic Hologon design is older than you mentioned. The basic design goes
>>back to the Topogon from the nineteen-twenties. Zeiss Jena developed the
>>Topogon originally as a distorsion free super wide-angle for aerial
>>photography. Graf Zeppelin and his passengers used the lens already!
>
>
>Whoa, brother! First, Graf Zeppelin died in 1917, so HE never saw a Topogon
>or a Hologon or a production Leica, either, though his General Manager, Dr
>Hugo Eckner, was an avid user -- and a recipient of a gift Leica from the
>Leitz family. The Zeppelin company always used Zeiss binoculars and the
>Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) did carry an ASPECTUM spotting scope in the control
>car. And the oldest aerial photograph which has survived was taken by Oskar
>Barnack in 1914 on Viktoria Luise with one of the UR-Leicas.
>
>I doubt if the Topogon and Hologon designs have much in common beyond
>sharing a symmetrical design. In any event, the Topogon was designed by Dr
>Richter in 1933 (DP 636167, USP 2031792). Carl Zeiss credits the offshoots
>of the Topogon as being the Pleon (1941), Planigon (1942?), the B&L Metrogon
>(1942 - USP 2325275), the Pleogon (1955), and the S-Pleogon (1968). Zeiss
>has never claimed, to my knowledge, a connexion between the Topogon and the
>Hologon. I suspect it is safer to regard the Hologon as an independent
>development in its own right. See, inter multa alia, Joachim Arnz' fine
>article, "The Topogon Wide-Angle" in the Zeiss Historica Society Journal 12:2.
>
>Marc
>
>msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315
>Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!
>
Your information looks certainly well researched and trustworthy. It would
have been interesting to have the final word from Zeiss Oberkochen (maybe
from Dr. Hohberg, their chief lens designer). My source document for the
information on the Hologon going back to the Topogon design, was Dr. A.
Scholz book "Leica M6, Geschichte und System", edited by W. Knapp Verlag,
Düsseldorf , 1988. Thanks for the very interesting data.
Gerard Captijn,
Geeva, Switzerland.
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