Re: [Leica] RE: Konica fiction

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

At 04:00 PM 5/12/2001 +0800, apbbeijing wrote:
>Yes - because you are adding the wrong numbers. The issue was introduced by
>Jim Brick that the heritage of Konica did not compare to that of Leica in
>the field of producing cameras. I countered that Konica had been in the
>photo business well before Leitz made any cameras. Jim further elucidated
>his argument by saying he was referring to the heritage of the 35mm camera
>as built by Oskar and developed continuously since then. Fair point. Your
>insistence that the Leitz company is older than this is not relevant to the
>discussion unless you think that the heritage of Leitz microscopes is
>relevant. I do not. Check the archive. It is all there.

Thanks, Adrian, for the clarification.

Leitz began constructing microscope cameras around 1890 or before, but I am
not "source-enabled" at the moment due to renovations, so I cannot be more
precise.  Barnack came to Leitz in part because his good friend, Emil
Mechau, had been hired by Leitz to produce cine microscopy cameras, a
project on which Barnack assisted Mechau and which was one of the threads
running together to cause Barnack to select the 35mm film format.

An optical company really cannot be compartmentalized too tightly:  the
expertise which allowed Berek to design the fine range of Summar microscopy
lenses at the turn of the last century was available twenty years later
when he began designing lenses for the Leica camera.  The film-transport
designs developed by Barnack for Mechau's cine cameras were available for
use in the Ur-Leica in 1914.  So, in this sense, a background in microscopy
and lab gear DID play directly into the Leica camera's heritage and
history.  (In a similar vein, Carl Zeiss also began as a microscope
manufacturer and it was not until the very late 1880's that they produced
their first photographic lens -- but the one played directly into the
other, and it is simply impossible to pick a given years and establish this
as a ne plus ultra.  Voigtländer, by comparison, was founded in 1756 as a
binocular and spotting-scope company and it was their expertise in
scientific lens development -- Erfle, for instance, had been one of their
designers around 1820 -- which caused the Habsburgs to select Voigtländer
for production of the Petzval Lens in the 1840's.  Again, one competency
flowed seamlessly into the next.)

Marc

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