Summicron ...wrong production dates???

[david strachan]

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Hi,

I have a collapsible Summicron Screw Mount Number 1042220. It's your usual 50mm f2 marked in metres, f2- f16.

 

All the lens production date lists (my Leica reference books, catalogues, web) show this as a 1952 lens.

All the literature and web research keeps showing this lens started production in 1953.

 

Anyone any thoughts??

 

Many thanks David S

[luigi bertolotti]

The well known published lists which relate certain serial numbers (or, better to say, BATCHES of serial numbers) to a certain year must be considered as a useful time reference but NOT as real and strict info that STATES that a certain item (to say, your Summicron 1042220) left the factory in a certain year (to say , 1952).

Expecially for new and important items (important, in the sense that are items for which big production numbers were planned, and of course the Summicron 50 was such) the relationship is rather loose : at a certain time, when the lens was at a certain development status, the factory did RESERVE certain batches of serial numbers to that lens... this did happen in a certain year... the number could had been allocated in 1952... but the lens with THAT number could have been made in 1953 or even 1954. And, moreover (you can see many examples in the Wiki area) for various reasons , a lens of another kind could be produced with a s/n within a batch allocated to another lens... at the end : the published lists are not a Bible and, in general not a definite statement of number<--->year of production.

 

And for no "mass production" lenses, the above relation can be also VERY loose : if you look, in the Wiki (or Puts' lists) at the famous Leitz Telyt-S 800mm f 6,3, you find a batch of 350 serial numbers... (2500651 to 2501000), dated 1971 : what really happened is that the LAST lens produced within that batch was # 2500891, which left the factory in 1994 .

Edited January 23, 2013 by luigi bertolotti

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[UliWer]

5cm Summicrons are listed from 920.001 onwards and are said to be produced as early as 1951 - even if they only saw the shops in 1953.

 

For your lens a production in 1952 is most probable (part of a batch of 5000 - according to Thiele - Kleines Fabrikationshandbuch Leica Objektive, Munich 2007). You can never be sure with those numbers, as certain batches of some thousand items were given their numbers well ahead of production, so it may be, that real dates differ from the sequence of numbers.

 

Edit: Luigi was quicker.

Edited January 23, 2013 by UliWer

[david strachan]

Thank you Luigi and Uli for your complete replies. Such esteemed experts...now I'm wiser.

Cheers Dave S