Re: computer-designed lenses

["Roger L. Beamon" <beamon@primenet.com>]

>Let's put the entire quotation into cyber-space
>
>"It might therefore be worth mentioning, that at Leitz Wetzlar one of the
>very first programme controlled computers, ESPECIALLY DESIGNED FOR OPTICAL
>CALCULATIONS, was installed as early as 1951"   (Emphasis added).
>Rogliatti, Leica and Leicaflex Lenses, 2nd edition, p. 8.

You are quoting a different Rogliatti book, Marc. I gave the complete
quotation from the book that I cited. There was no mention re: those 1951
computers being used for lens design. The fact that the material I quoted
from just a few pages later in the same book, then mentions the mid fifties
as when the computer got into lens design would seem to indicate that those
1951 machines might not have been used for lens design.

>Your suggestion that this was used for book-keeping baffles me -- why would
>Leitz, of all folks, take a computer designed for lens formulation and use
>this for book-keeping?

My text clearly stated that I was only guessing that the 1951 machines might
have been used for something else and speculated on what that might have been. 

>Further, Emil Keller -- who worked for Leitz at this point and who was great
>friends with the family -- has also related that computer-produced lens
>designs began in the early 1950's.  I believe the 2/50 Summicron was
>probably the final design conceived without the aid of computers.

Don't know Keller. Did he document this in writing?  Even if he did, we're
talking about recollection from a long time ago. Hillary can't remember what
she did only 13 years ago.  :-)

Besides, if Keller is correct or my inference from Rogliatti's "...70 Years"
is correct, it matters little. We're only contesting a year or two. The
first respondent questioned your originally stated year of 1949. I do also,
and now that you've refreshed your memory with Rogliatti's "Leica and
Leicaflex Lenses", I suspect you will now defer to a date considerably later
than 1949. BTW, "...70 Years" has a publish date of Sept. 1995. I believe it
is Rogliatti's latest book. Could it represent his latest thinking regarding
the approximate date of computer assisted lens design at Leitz? 
     --
     Roger Beamon,  Naturalist & Photographer
                               Docent:  Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
                               Leica Historical Society Of America
                               INTERNET:  beamon@primenet.com