Re: [Leica] Duncan and Mydans and Nikkor Lenses

[Jeffcoat Photography <jeffcoatphoto@sumter.net>]

Marc, Very interesting. Thank you for  the history lesson.

Marc James Small wrote:

> 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
> Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!

- --
Cheers Wilber GFE
tel. 803-469-2440

http://www.jeffcoatphotography.com