Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Marc: I've finally managed to do it, I've made you sound like a "commie". :-D Marc James Small wrote: >At 10:43 PM 4/25/06 -0400, Walt Johnson wrote: > > >>Marc: >> >>For all their inept engineering ability the Russians did manage to beat >>us into space. They were lucky to steal more Nazi scientists than we did. >> >> > >Walt > >That is both a cheap shot and untrue. The Soviets had a really sound >scientific base and the history of science is replete with fine Russian >names indicating the depth of their capacity -- one of the finest of late >Tsarist composers, for instance, was also a world-class chemist. And >Soviet engineering was not inept, either. The problem with the Soviets was >a horrid economic system which allowed very little capitalization for the >exploitation of scientific advances. > >Of the German scientists and engineers who chose to leave Germany, and many >did not, the US obtained the services of approximately 2/3 of them under >OPERATION PAPERCLIP, and the British got most of the rest -- the British >managed to score all of the German atomic scientists save for two or three >who fell into the hands of the Soviets, while the US got most of the >rocketry engineers. In the end, very few went East save for a few who were >dedicated Communists or who were junior enough to recognize that they would >do better in the Soviet Union than in the West. And, of course, the West >got all of the senior optical scientists from Carl Zeiss Jena save for >Ernst Wandersleb, and that issue is a bit complex: Wandersleb had been >removed by the Nazis from Zeiss as his wife was Jewish. After the end of >the War -- and, yes, she survived, thanks to the head of Zeiss, Heinz >K?ppenbender, and the intervention at his request of Speer -- the two Zeiss >entities offered him employment and a full pension as he chose, and he >elected to remain at Jena, and retired in 1957. (Wandersleb had served as >the chief assistant to Rudolph in the development of the Tessar, later >reworked it to allow it to be widened to f/2.8, then developed the Biotar >design and, finally, instructed his own chief assistant, Hans Sauer, to >recompute Rudolph's six-element Planar in light of lens coatings, leading >to the genesis of today's bevy of Planar five-element designs.) > >So, no, the Soviets did quite a bit on their own, and the US got the lion's >share of German scientists. > >Marc > >msmall@aya.yale.edu >Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir! > > > > >_______________________________________________ >Leica Users Group. >See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > > >