Leitz Xenon 5cm f/1.5 Brief Guide - Rumors and Facts

[Tears Everywhere]

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25 minutes ago, willeica said:

Why were the differences in the design of the lenses between the Xenon and the Summarit (including the aperture direction) not sufficient to allow the removal of the copyright acknowledgement?

TTH patented a 7 elements in 5 groups objective In US2019985, we can call it a standard 6 element Gauss lens plus an additional rear group. Any lens has "Gauss+1" in optical will infringe the TTH patent, no matter what the detail design it is.

[willeica]

40 minutes ago, Tears Everywhere said:

TTH patented a 7 elements in 5 groups objective In US2019985, we can call it a standard 6 element Gauss lens plus an additional rear group. Any lens has "Gauss+1" in optical will infringe the TTH patent, no matter what the detail design it is.

I doubt if such a proposition would get a patent today. Indeed, I doubt if it would have been enforceable back in the day. Lens designers have been organising lenses in groups for over 150 years and I cannot think of a single case where a successful suit was brought based on this. Paul (pgk) and I have been looking at number of disputes on lens design going back to the 1860s. I suspect that Leitz just wanted to 'do the right thing' in this case. I would be very interested in any supporting evidence about the TTH and Schneider situation and the contention that the latter knowingly infringed the former's copyrights.

William

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[Tears Everywhere]

10 minutes ago, willeica said:

I doubt if such a proposition would get a patent today. Indeed, I doubt if it would have been enforceable back in the day. Lens designers have been organising lenses in groups for over 150 years and I cannot think of a single case where a successful suit was brought based on this.

That was 1930s, only 10 more years after first high speed Gauss lens invented, any slight variation could get patented easily.
For example, Leica filed the design of Summar in 1933, it only simply described a Gauss lens with two cemented surfaces convex toward object side. Summar get patented in 1935 easily. Because other Gauss lenses all had their cemented surfaces convex toward different side, only Summar (based on Cooke Speed Panchro) made them toward the same side.

[willeica]

3 hours ago, Tears Everywhere said:

That was 1930s, only 10 more years after first high speed Gauss lens invented, any slight variation could get patented easily.
For example, Leica filed the design of Summar in 1933, it only simply described a Gauss lens with two cemented surfaces convex toward object side. Summar get patented in 1935 easily. Because other Gauss lenses all had their cemented surfaces convex toward different side, only Summar (based on Cooke Speed Panchro) made them toward the same side.

I have no doubt you are right about that. Could you include any actual cases of litigation over lens designs in your article?

William

[luigi bertolotti]

Hum... I think that chasing for cases of litigation would be much more difficult than studyng the history of patents... 🙄 even limiting to 3 countries (Germany, UK, USA) one had to chase into law courts archives (probably, the court of the location/town where the prosecuted had its legal entity registered)...very hard job..  patents are "published" by definition... lawsuits proceedings are simply "archived and kept" (*) ; and worst again if the litigation had been discussed out of court, finding some economical agreements between the lawyers of the 2 companies.

For my (modest) memory on similar matters, I can only remember that there is a good documentation about the litigation on the usage of Zeiss name after WWII ... West/East Germany etc... but was all another matter, not related to patents (even if involved the usage of names well known in our community... 😎.. Sonnar Planar and similar...)

(*) and none, I think, would decide to invest in digitalization / publication of such documents...which for 90% are made by trivial cases of litigations between private subjects for money/related questions....

Edited May 28, 2020 by luigi bertolotti

[willeica]

53 minutes ago, luigi bertolotti said:

Hum... I think that chasing for cases of litigation would be much more difficult than studyng the history of patents... 🙄 even limiting to 3 countries (Germany, UK, USA) one had to chase into law courts archives (probably, the court of the location/town where the prosecuted had its legal entity registered)...very hard job..  patents are "published" by definition... lawsuits proceedings are simply "archived and kept" (*) ; and worst again if the litigation had been discussed out of court, finding some economical agreements between the lawyers of the 2 companies.

For my (modest) memory on similar matters, I can only remember that there is a good documentation about the litigation on the usage of Zeiss name after WWII ... West/East Germany etc... but was all another matter, not related to patents (even if involved the usage of names well known in our community... 😎.. Sonnar Planar and similar...)

(*) and none, I think, would decide to invest in digitalization / publication of such documents...which for 90% are made by trivial cases of litigations between private subjects for money/related questions....

Patents are only bits of paper if they are not enforced or are not capable of being enforced. This goes back to the very beginnings of photography. 'Talbot' here is William Fox Talbot and I suspect that he realised that the game was up for his calotype process as wet plate took off.

" In 1854, Talbot applied for an extension of the 14-year patent. At that time, one of his lawsuits, against photographer Martin Laroche, was heard in court. The Talbot v. Laroche case proved to be pivotal. Laroche's side argued that the patent was invalid, as a similar process had been invented earlier by Joseph Reade, and that using the collodion process did not infringe the calotype patent in any case, because of significant differences between the two processes. In the verdict, the jury upheld the calotype patent but agreed that Laroche was not infringing upon it by using the collodion process. Disappointed by the outcome, Talbot chose not to extend his patent."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talbot_v_Laroche#cite_note-wood-3

Talbot had enforced some earlier cases in Court, but the view of many photographic historians is that he did his process no favours by insisting on trying enforce his patents. 

When writing an article recently about Leica Fakes and Copies, I looked around for cases where Leica might have started litigation in respect of the many apparent breaches of its copyrights which seem to have happened over the years. I could not find any examples. Stating that Schneider had breached T, T&H copyrights would need to be caveated carefully, as there is no evidence that this was ever proven in law, apart from the acknowledgments on the barrels of the Leitz Xenon lenses which were based on the Schneider models. Now, if Tears Everywhere has further documentary evidence from the relevant period, I would be all eyes and ears.

William

[Tears Everywhere]

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6 hours ago, willeica said:

Stating that Schneider had breached T, T&H copyrights would need to be caveated carefully, as there is no evidence that this was ever proven in law, apart from the acknowledgments on the barrels of the Leitz Xenon lenses which were based on the Schneider models.

Those acknowledgments engraved on first batch, even on prototype of Xenon and Summarit. If there was any conflict or agreement between TTH and Lecia, it had been solved during product preparing stage.

Edited May 29, 2020 by Tears Everywhere

[willeica]

2 hours ago, Tears Everywhere said:

Those acknowledgments engraved on first batch, even on prototype of Xenon and Summarit. If there was any conflict or agreement between TTH and Lecia, it had been solved during product preparing stage.

I would be interested to see any documentation relating to the pre-production stage. The circumstances here are somewhat unique as the commercial link appears to have been between Leitz and Schneider, whereas the latter does not seem to have acknowledged the T, T &H situation. It has all been a real mystery up to this.

William

[pgk]

In my investigations about photographic history I have found old photographic magazine ('Journals") to have been an invaluable source of fascinating material. the royal photographic Society (RPS) has digitised its Journal from the1853 and all is available for viewing and, far more importantly, searching electronically here: https://archive.rps.org. So any litigation which has been brought would almost certainly have been reported and could be searched for. The problem in the case of the Xenon is that its impossible to search for the opposite - lack of litigation. However I can thoroughly recommend using the RPS resource because it can be an interesting, contemporary take on things and often details long forgotten events, announcements and controversies, which make great reading. As William is well aware, using the RPS resource has revealed so quite startling information and our current 'take' on photographic history is often 'blurred' and factually incorrect. I am sure that delving into the early days of Leica would yield some information worth of being posted here. I'll see if I can spot anything about the Xenon early on next time I look.

[As an aside I discovered that 'mountain' photography took place surprisingly early. By 1865 photographs were being taken at 18,600 feet up in the Himalayas on a 12" x 10" tripod mounted wet plate camera. The sheer determination of, and difficulties faced by the photographer (Samuel Bourne of Simla), make later exploits carrying a ltm Leica and a couple of lenses seem quite tame in comparison!]

[pgk]

From the RPS Archive - The Photographic Journal of July 1937 - mentions patents and queries the name - so clearly all patent issues had been sorted out before the lens was even announced. Pure conjecture, but I just wonder if Schneider's patent wasn't engraved because the name Xenon was used and Schneider saw value in their lens name being associated with Leica?

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Edited May 29, 2020 by pgk

[willeica]

Paul

£34 is the correct price as a quick bit of maths on this post which I made on another thread yesterday will show. This is a 1938 catalogue amended by hand in 1949.

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Again doing some quick maths, the price of the Summarit, introduced in 1949 to replace the Xenon, was £51, as the war caused a huge amount of inflation. Interestingly, in 1938 you could get a IIIb with an Elmar for the same price as a Xenon on its own.

Paul, your post above, which contains material which could have only come from Leitz, adds to our knowledge of the contemporary situation, but, as you imply, does not fully explain it. Yes, Schneider used the Xenon name, and probably patented it, but why would Leitz enter a deal just based on a name. I have an early post war Balda Super Baldina which carries a Schneider -Kreuznach Xenon f2 lens in a Compur mount. The lens screws out and it is difficult to say how many elements it has, but it would have been quite an engineering feat to get seven elements into it as it is very tiny.

William

 

[Tears Everywhere]

3 hours ago, willeica said:

The circumstances here are somewhat unique as the commercial link appears to have been between Leitz and Schneider, whereas the latter does not seem to have acknowledged the T, T &H situation. It has all been a real mystery up to this.

Schneider made their acknowledgment to TTH in the patent document of third type Xenon. Then in 1935, when the TTH patent US2019985 approved and Leica looking for license, Schneider redesigned a fourth type Xenon to avoid this problem. Leica Xenon was totally different to its Schneider brother in optical construction, although they shared the same product name. 
That's what Paul found in the article of 1937 "It incorporates patents of two other firms - Taylor, Taylor and Hobson, and Schneider, as well as Leitz patents."

I am planing to write more detailes about those Xenons after Aug 14, the 100 year anniversary of high speed Gauss.

[luigi bertolotti]

3 hours ago, pgk said:

 

[As an aside I discovered that 'mountain' photography took place surprisingly early. By 1865 photographs were being taken at 18,600 feet up in the Himalayas on a 12" x 10" tripod mounted wet plate camera. The sheer determination of, and difficulties faced by the photographer (Samuel Bourne of Simla), make later exploits carrying a ltm Leica and a couple of lenses seem quite tame in comparison!]

(if you are intersted in historical mountain photography : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Sella ) ... a niece of Italian Alpine Club founder : wonderful collection of his works in Turin... mostly taken on 30x40cm plates in last years of '800) 

[willeica]

33 minutes ago, Tears Everywhere said:

Schneider made their acknowledgment to TTH in the patent document of third type Xenon. Then in 1935, when the TTH patent US2019985 approved and Leica looking for license, Schneider redesigned a fourth type Xenon to avoid this problem. Leica Xenon was totally different to its Schneider brother in optical construction, although they shared the same product name. 
That's what Paul found in the article of 1937 "It incorporates patents of two other firms - Taylor, Taylor and Hobson, and Schneider, as well as Leitz patents."

I am planing to write more detailes about those Xenons after Aug 14, the 100 year anniversary of high speed Gauss.

Thanks. I hope you can tie together all the loose ends, such as which were the Schneider characteristics (using this instead of 'elements' to avoid confusion) and which were the T,T&H characteristics in the Leitz Xenon. Also the issue of why did Leitz use the name 'Xenon' which was associated with Schneider and a range of different lenses produced by that company?

I am looking forward to your article and I hope that it can tie up all of the above and other issues raised in this thread. You certainly seem to have access to some rather interesting documents.

William

[luigi bertolotti]

13 hours ago, pgk said:

From the RPS Archive - The Photographic Journal of July 1937 - mentions patents and queries the name - so clearly all patent issues had been sorted out before the lens was even announced. Pure conjecture, but I just wonder if Schneider's patent wasn't engraved because the name Xenon was used and Schneider saw value in their lens name being associated with Leica?

 

... a German-to-German biz... 😉... between 2 companies both in the photo market, but not in so direct competition... I think that was a "win-win" agreement : Schneider , as you say, valued the fact of association with Leica... and Leitz got its "prestige" 50 f 1,5 and was surely not unhappy that the lens' name did appear also on very professional Large Format cameras (which in turn were surely not regarded as an alternative for a Leica). And even when the Xenon name appeared also in other 35mm cameras like the Retina, I think that Leitz had no much to complain with Schneider (maybe there was a specific agreement on the matter of 35mmm ?) : they were quite different cameras... aperture wasn't 1,5 iirc... and surely there wasn't any risk that Schneider embarked in selling Xenons 1,5 to Zeiss... 😎 (or in offering a 3rd party  alternative to the Sonnar 1,5.. no economical sense, and, about patents, maybe the BM of Contax was "protected") 

All another matter with the English TTH... 

[Pyrogallol]

On 5/21/2020 at 4:46 PM, Pyrogallol said:

All this reading about the xenon made me want one. It didn’t take long to find a relatively cheap “user” copy that arrived today.

Four rings, 1938.  A few quick shots on a digital body look similar to the war time f1.5 Sonnar LTM lenses I have, soft or glowey at f1.5 and sharpening up with better contrast by f2.8 or smaller.

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Finally have some results on film from the Xenon, on a Reid 3. 100th and 200th at f6.3 on Rollei 400 Infrared in Moersch Tanol, scanned from darkroom prints.

Out of interest the final picture is of the floating ferry as it was around 1912, when Oskar was working on his liliput camera idea.

With my Victorian boatshed in the background.

[Pyrogallol]

On 5/3/2020 at 2:43 PM, willeica said:

Where do I begin? All of this seems to have kicked up several degrees while I was otherwise occupied this morning.

Hartmut Thiele shows ranges for up to 6,505 Xenon serial numbers as having been assigned, but the Blue Book only shows 6190 as having been manufactured between 1936 and 1950. Thiele's list needs to be read carefully as Leitz often did not use the full number ranges assigned.  Perhaps, we should leave the final word to Dumur (who should have known the facts) when he said that about 2,000 lenses were made. Going back to Thiele, he does end each entry line for the Xenon with 'Schneider-Pat.' which one must assume came from the record books in Wetzlar. Interestingly, the first Summarits have entries which end with 'Xenon-Variante'.

Early lenses had softer glass than today's offerings and were easily scratched, particularly by photographers trying to clean them with their ties. It is the same with early coated lenses. Haze and fungus are also quite common and the more glass and elements that were used in construction, the more likely that these would exist. You really need to examine such lenses personally before purchase. That being said, I have 12 Summars (a specialist subject of mine) and they were mainly bought at auction or online and almost all of them have glass elements that are in good condition.

The discussion about Grubb and Dallmeyer is not totally irrelevant as it shows that the same issues existed in the 1850s and 1860s about who 'invented' developments in lens design. Thomas Grubb entered into heated discussions about lens design in the pages of the Photographic Journal with another scientist/optician who styled himself as a 'Wrangler from Cambridge'. A 'Wrangler' was, apparently, someone who was good at maths. This got quite heated on occasion with the Wrangler making disparaging comments about the 'Emerald Isle' as Grubb was Irish. He may have been someone who was beating a drum for another manufacturer such as Ross or Dallmeyer or who was trying to get a foot on the lens design ladder himself. I mainly collect the simple Aplanatic designs of Thomas Grubb from the 1850s and 1860s, but I have one later (possibly 1880s) which carries the name of Grubb's son Sir Howard Grubb. It is described as an Aplanatic Doublet and it has a Waterhouse stop between the two sets of elements. The bottom set is stuck, so I cannot remove it to make precise measurements, but both sets appear to be the same size. Paul (pgk) and I have between us about 10% of the Grubb lenses still known to exist. Can you imagine owning 200 Xenons?

These are strong words. I have no way to contradict this, but Leitz , to their credit, seem to have got some message through Schneider as otherwise the TTH would not have appeared on their Xenon lenses. The 'Schneider -Pat.' referenced above is also interesting. Leitz were always very cautious in their approach even though there is no evidence that Leitz ever sued anyone for the many breaches of their patents. I looked into this recently while preparing an article on Leica Fakes and Copies. Tears Everywhere, do you intend to publish your research anywhere, as you certainly seem to have a wealth of fascinating material?

Finally the lens development journey through time from Grubb through Dallmeyer, Ross, TTH, Kodak, Zeiss, Schneider and Leitz and many, many others is one of continuous development and borrowing of ideas. Does anyone have a single example of where somebody or some company successfully sued for breach of lens design copyright or patent?

William

There are Grubb  lenses for sale here,

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GRUBBS-VERY-EARLY-LANDSCAPE-LENSES-X2/353130132934?hash=item52383235c6:g:IbQAAOSwTeNfAfnb

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GRUBBS-VERY-EARLY-PORTRAIT-LENS/353130140165?hash=item5238325205:g:SmoAAOSwEPFfAf4r

Edited July 5, 2020 by Pyrogallol

[Tears Everywhere]

On 5/29/2020 at 8:50 PM, willeica said:

Thanks. I hope you can tie together all the loose ends, such as which were the Schneider characteristics (using this instead of 'elements' to avoid confusion) and which were the T,T&H characteristics in the Leitz Xenon. Also the issue of why did Leitz use the name 'Xenon' which was associated with Schneider and a range of different lenses produced by that company?

My friend and I tested various of Xenon recently, including one Summarit and one very rare postwar Xenon in LTM.

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[willeica]

2 hours ago, Tears Everywhere said:

My friend and I tested various of Xenon recently, including one Summarit and one very rare postwar Xenon in LTM.

The results would be interesting, but this is a very disparate group of lenses, made at different times by at least two different manufacturers and, being old, they may be in different conditions depending on the life they have led. A bit like many of us here!

William

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[Tears Everywhere]

On 5/29/2020 at 8:50 PM, willeica said:

Also the issue of why did Leitz use the name 'Xenon' which was associated with Schneider and a range of different lenses produced by that company?

Briefly speaking, the 3rd version Schneider Xenon designed in 1930 was the first 5-group or "Gauss+1" design in Germany, even slightly earlier than TTH patent US2019985. That's why Leica chose Schneider Xenon as partner to make a new fast lens. Unfortunately, the 1930 Xenon was another piracy product of TTH Speed Panchro families and the origin design of TTH got patent in US & UK.

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Edited August 23, 2020 by Tears Everywhere