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Leica, Leitz Time Machine -- feel free to post your finding here


Erato

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I'd like to share those missing puzzles with you guys for all those gems of the crown.

Please feel free to share your finding as well.

 

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43 minutes ago, NZDavid said:

Looks like Leica is an American invention! 😀

Leica took out patents in the US and UK as well as Germany. They never really enforced those patents, though. Before WWII the Soviets made all outside patents non applicable. After WWII the Allies cancelled all Axis patents. The irony was , though, that the most successful copies of the Leica were from the other main wing of the Axis, Japan. US and British copies were nowhere near as successful. 
 

William

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The ad quotes only the Screw mount items... so it's from a very early stage of introduction (1952) : in those times "Germany" was still a name that didn't sound fine for many Americans.... so they preferred to stay far from emphasizing the "Made in..."  (note, the small "Germany" writing apparently was printed in soft gray... not black...😉I am even surprised they didn't, at least, put in upsidedown position the "Gmbh Wetzlar" writing, which looks definitely Deutsch... 😁)

 

Edited by luigi bertolotti
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This website is a must (sorry only in French ...)

https://lavidaleica.com/gallery/v/VintageAds/French/?g2_page=3

 

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vor 2 Stunden schrieb luigi bertolotti:

The ad quotes only the Screw mount items...

True, but the Summicron 50 shown in the above brochure is an M-mount lens! The base of the screw mount lens is different, and you can even see the red index dot (which is only present on M-mount lenses).

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1 hour ago, wizard said:

True, but the Summicron 50 shown in the above brochure is an M-mount lens! The base of the screw mount lens is different, and you can even see the red index dot (which is only present on M-mount lenses).

Yep, you're right about this. It is a M-bayonet-collapsible, 1955 batch.

Edited by Erato
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Leica E39 filters.

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Interestingly, Leitz obtained a patent for the Summicron v1 in the US (the patent number is indicated in the above brochure), but there is no corresponding patent in Germany (I just checked). There was, however, a German patent application (on which the US patent is based), but even that German patent application was never published. Would be interesting to know what happened, as the Summicron v1 was without doubt an important lens for Leitz at the time.

Edited by wizard
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2 hours ago, wizard said:

True, but the Summicron 50 shown in the above brochure is an M-mount lens! The base of the screw mount lens is different, and you can even see the red index dot (which is only present on M-mount lenses).

True !! I didn't notice... and the s/n is of '54... btw, the "vague" sketch of a M3 body is visible in background... maybe the ad is right around the M3 intro... maybe just a little before... a sort of "anticipation / spoil"... 😄

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16 minutes ago, wizard said:

Interestingly, Leitz obtained a patent for the Summicron v1 in the US (the patent number is indicated in the above brochure), but there is no corresponding patent in Germany (I just checked). There was, however, a German patent application (on which the US patent is based), but even that German patent application was never published. Would be interesting to know what happened, as the Summicron v1 was without doubt an important lens for Leitz at the time.

Check my post above. Germany was in Zones controlled by the US, Britain, France and Russia up to 1949 , but occupation forces remained for some time afterwards. German cars were registered with the occupying forces and German patents had been annulled by the Allies. It is no surprise that Leitz took out US rather than German patents.

As I also mentioned, Leitz rarely pursued its patents, despite many copies being produced before and after WWII. Leica Fakes and Copies are currently proudly on display in glass cases in the the hallway of the Leica AG HQ in Wetzlar.

Leica manuals and brochures were regularly touched up in that era. I have shown an an example here before from two different editions of a IIIf manual where a Summitar was touched up to make it into a Summicron, but they did not change the serial number. 

William

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The excellent pages from Marco Cavina do display the US Patent (filed in 1950 - registered in 1952)

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On 9/9/2021 at 5:39 AM, wizard said:

True, but the Summicron 50 shown in the above brochure is an M-mount lens! The base of the screw mount lens is different, and you can even see the red index dot (which is only present on M-mount lenses).

And the outline of the camera behind it is an M3 as well!

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It looks as if the items in the U.S brochure shown in #1had five digits catalogue numbers. This is strange since the German - and I thought until now international -  catalogues never had numbers but only the famous five letter words (e.g. SOOICfor the collapsible Summicron) for the cameras and the lens on display.  The lens and of course the f-models LTM cameras were discontinued before the five digits catalogue numbers were introduced in 1961. 

Does this mean that catalogue numbers were introduced in U.S. long before they replaced the five letter words internationally?
 

 

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1 hour ago, UliWer said:

the five digits catalogue numbers were introduced in 1961

Uli, something was going on with catalog numbers long before 1961.  The E. Leitz NY catalog from 1939 lists both a catalog number and a code word.  At that time the catalog numbers range from about 64,000 to 75,000 and included the ",".   In the E. Leitz NY catalog from 1957 lists both a catalog number and a code word, but the catalog numbers are entirely different.  In the 1957 catalog the catalog numbers seen to be the ones we are familiar with, although I didn't not check them.

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Am 9.9.2021 um 19:24 schrieb luigi bertolotti:

The excellent pages from Marco Cavina do display the US Patent

Luigi, I have obtained a copy of the original patent print myself, and it shows two embodiments, a first one in Figure 1 and a second one in Figure 2. The embodiment shown in your post is Figure 1, and to the best of my knowledge such a lens was never built. It is the embodiment shown in Figure 2 that corresponds to the original Summicron 50mm lens (note the air lens between the first and second lens element, and an additional (dispersive) air lens between the third and the fourth lens element (which corresponds to the optical construction of the original Summicron as also shown in the initial post of this thread). Claim 5 of the patent is directed to the embodiment having two air lenses (called air gaps in the patent).

Best,

Andy

Edited by wizard
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Indeed the "air elements" were even evidenced inLeitz' ads :

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But (always quoting Cavina) the 2nd air space (3rd-4th el.) was implemented only in 1952 with the proprietery Leitz LaK9 glass (around # 993.000) ,  According to him, previous lenses had only the 1st/2nd el. air space.

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 No. 1381
E. LEITZ, INC.
468 FOURTH AVENUE • NEW YORK 16, N. Y.
DD·5/ 53·AMP Primed in U.S.A.
Correction of vignetting in a large aperture lens is of great importance. Unless special attention is paid to this, the edges of the negativ~ will receive much less light than other areas, resulting in a darkening of the edges of the picture, or in the case of color photography, a false rendition of color at the edges of the'trans- parency. The front element of the Summicron is larger in diameter than required for a relative aperture of f/2. This design increases the transverse section of the bundle of oblique rays, permitting more light to reach the edges, thereby reducing vignetting to a minimum.
Increasing the width of the oblique bundle of rays to eliminate vignetting increases the difficulty of correcting other aberrations. The reduction of vignetting in the Summicron, coupled with its over-all high correction, can be regarded as an outstanding achievement of optical design. The Summicron is a lens of highest performance leaving nothing to be desired for either color or black-and-white photography.
The basic design of the Summicron is protected by United Slates patent number 2,622,478 . 

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vor 14 Stunden schrieb luigi bertolotti:

But (always quoting Cavina) the 2nd air space (3rd-4th el.) was implemented only in 1952 with the proprietery Leitz LaK9 glass (around # 993.000) ,  According to him, previous lenses had only the 1st/2nd el. air space.

I severely doubt that this is true. It is in any case the first time that I hear that there have been two versions of the first Summicron lens. I do know that glass types were changed to substitute the radioactice Chance Brothers glass by non-radioactive glass. However, no significant change in optical construction appears to have resulted therefrom.

As evidenced by Erato above, Leitz advertised the presence of two air lenses (cf. penultimate paragraph quoted by Erato above, as well as the drawing showing the Summicron's optical construction) from the very beginning. Moreover, the first embodiment (which has only one air lens) shown in the Summicron patent requires an additional flat flint glass plate (labelled "g" in the patent drawing) to absorb the radioactive rays. I have never seen any Summicron lens with such an additional glass plate at the rear end.

So I believe it is safe to assume that Leitz went for the second embodiment (with two air lenses) shown and described in the patent from the very beginning.

Cheers,

Andy

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28 minutes ago, wizard said:

I severely doubt that this is true. It is in any case the first time that I hear that there have been two versions of the first Summicron lens. I do know that glass types were changed to substitute the radioactice Chance Brothers glass by non-radioactive glass. However, no significant change in optical construction appears to have resulted therefrom.

As evidenced by Erato above, Leitz advertised the presence of two air lenses (cf. penultimate paragraph quoted by Erato above, as well as the drawing showing the Summicron's optical construction) from the very beginning. Moreover, the first embodiment (which has only one air lens) shown in the Summicron patent requires an additional flat flint glass plate (labelled "g" in the patent drawing) to absorb the radioactive rays. I have never seen any Summicron lens with such an additional glass plate at the rear end.

So I believe it is safe to assume that Leitz went for the second embodiment (with two air lenses) shown and described in the patent from the very beginning.

Cheers,

Andy

Andy, you are probably right based on the available evidence. It only remains to see whether the intent of the patent was carried into any production models, or whether all of them had the 2 air space set up.This might involve taking apart precious artefacts and we may not know unless someone has the internal Leitz documentation.

Meanwhile on a lighter note, here is an example of how a lens could be changed by a photo toucher. These are in two successive editions of the If, IIf, IIIf brochure. They did not change the the number of the photo, '3374', but just added a 'b' to show the altered one.

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William

 

 

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