Re: [Leica] Duncan and Mydans and Nikkor Lenses

[Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>]

At 10:02 PM 3/10/2000 +0000, john wrote:
>I notice that many folk, we Americans especially, talk a lot about the
>Japanese camera industry early postwar era consisted largely of rip-off
copies
>of German cameras and lenses. But I am wondering if this is really the whole
>story.  I am not a history buff, but I remember, of course, that Japan and
>Germany were Allies during the WWll and I assume they traded quite a bit of
>technology including much photographic technology. Do you know if Ziss and or
>Leitz sent technicians and tooling to Japan during the war years? Just how
>closely did the two countries photo industries work together?  I guess what I
>am asking is whether the copies were rip-offs or the results of shared
>information etc. as part of the war effort.

Five tons of so of optical glass were sent by submarine during the war, and
some camera bodies -- one of the VERY few known examples of the
aerial-recon camera on which the Hasselbald 1600F was based recently
surfaced, having been found in 1944 on a wrecked Japanese photo recon
airplane in New Guinea.

But there were never any direct wartime licensing agreements involving
Leitz, Zeiss, Canon or Nikon and, in any event, the respective Allied
Control Commissions abrogated all such arrangements in 1945.  In 1948, the
State Department decided, at the urging of George Kennan (inventor of
"containment"), that the US should be the dynamic force behind the
reconstruction of the Japanese economy.  The US (which dominated the Allied
Control Commission in Japan and which ran the Military Government, with
minor British, French, ANZAC, and Dutch participation) the lifted a number
of stringent controls on Japanese industrial production provided $500
million in foreign aid.

The Japanese economy almost immediately began to rebuild itself.  The US
WAS quite concerned that the Japanese would go back into the munitions
trade, so they were discouraged from doing so by being helped to convert
former ordnance factories to the manufacture of civilian wares.  (Even two
years later, when the US forces in Korea suffered equipment and ammunition
shortages, the US would only purchase general equipment (such as tents,
medical equipment, mess gear and the like) from Japan, but would not use
the Japanese to supply ammunition and ordnance.)

Hence, the Japanese were urged to convert companies which had made the
magnificent Japanese optical gear -- gun-sights, range-finders, and the
like -- to civilian cameras and lenses.  And two of these companies began
to infringe on Leitz and Zeiss patents -- Canon took the basic Leitz
shutter, rangefinder, and lens-mount, while Nikon took the Zeiss Ikon
Contax rangefinder and lens-mount and the Leitz shutter.

Leitz and Zeiss objected but were told by the European Allied Control
Commission that they would not be allowed to protect their patent rights.
(And, no, the Allies did not "own" these rights, save that the Soviets had
been granted the rights to the Zeiss Ikon Contax line and its Zeiss lenses,
by the Allied Committee on Optical Reparations, as a specific item of
reparations.)  The rationale behind this was that both countries were then
defeated and had surrendered unconditionally, so their governance was
directly controlled by the Allies.  And the Allies were delighted that
Canon and Nikon were producing cameras and not bomb-sights.

It is a myth that Americans -- and others! -- have fallen into for almost a
century that Japanese industry is sterile and capable only of copies.  The
Tsar's folks made this mis-assessment early in this century and lost the
Russo-Japanese War.  The US and UK made this mistake in 1941, with truly
sad results -- my father was then an anti-aircraft battery commander, and
his training as late as 5 DEC 41 was that Japanese bombing runs would be
rigid, low-level, and easily shot down, none of which was true.  And we
make the same mistake today if we see the Japanese camera industry of 1950
as ONLY making EXACT copies of German designs.  That is obviously false:
working from their German exemplars, the Japanese industry soon produced a
swathe of fertile and innovative changes to the basic Leitz and Zeiss
originals.  The original lenses were copies of German designs but were soon
reworked both to lower production costs and to improve optical performance
- -- the 1.5/50 Nikkor, for instance, was replaced in 1951 by the redesigned
and improved 1.4/50 Nikkor, and so forth.  Canon made dramatic improvements
in the Leitz RF design, Nikon slightly reworked the Contax lens-mount, and
so forth.  By 1955, little remained of the German designs save for the LTM
itself.

This saga is well documented -- Colonel Doctor Carl Nelson, for instance,
was the Chairman of the Inter-Allied Committee on Optical Reparations, and
I was privileged to interview him several years back.  George Kennan has
written in some detail of this, and the documents of the US Department of
State for this period contain much coverage of this as well.  And the
records of the Allied Control Commissions for both Germany and Japan can be
found in the US Archives and are "easily" accessible (though "easy" is a
relative term in dealing with the US Archives!)  The British PRO has some
documents, as well, though their retained records primarily cover the
German ACC.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
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