RE: Too hot to handle in POP

[Edward Meyers <aghalide@panix.com>]

On Fri, 7 Mar 1997, Marc James Small wrote:

> At 11:27 AM 3/7/97 -0800, John wrote:
> 
> >	AS an aside a bit of interesting trivia about Japan and it's 
> >optical industry.  During Hitler's regime, a group of German Jewish 
> >optical scientist's Applied to a number of different governments, thay 
> >wanted someplace where they could go as a group and continue working.  
> >They were rejected by most of the world powers, but japan gave them a 
> >home, and provided them with the rescoures they needed to work as a 
> >group.  IMO this is one of the reasons that Japan today dominates the 
> >world optical industry.
> 
> This is emphatically NOT true.  There were a number of noted German optical
> scientists of the Jewish faith, and almost all of these were protected by
> their employers -- including, incidentally, the designer of the original
> Contax, who was shipped by Zeiss to France and then assisted by them in
> escaping to Palestine when France fell in 1940.  But none of these guys
> ended up in Japan.
> 
> The Wartime Japanese optical industry was rather so-so.  The time of
> prominence came after the War, when the MacArthur occupation regime would
> not allow Zeiss and Leitz to sue Nikon and Canon to protect their patent
> rights;  MacArthur felt, strongly, that it was in the US national interests
> to protect the growth of the Japanese optical industry, though the US did
> not agree and for several years would not permit the sale of Japanese
> cameras in the 24mm by 36mm format to be sold in the US, hence the use of
> the 24mm by 32mm format, and the like, by some early Postwar Japanese companies.
> 
> By the time the US had restored sovereignity to the Japanese and the Allies
> to Germany, the damage had been done, and Nikon and Canon had built from
> their thieveries the reputation they continue to enjoy today.
> 
> Marc
> 
> msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
> Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!
> 
> 
Marc, I had been told that part of the German surrender was their
loss of all patents. Reason was that during WWI we fought them using
the Springfield '03 rifle, which was a copy of the better Mauser used
by the Germans. After the war the Germans sued the U.S. government
(or manufacturer of the Springfield) for patent infringement--
and won. We were upset, to say the least and didn't want it to
happen again. So, I'm told, we did them in on the patents.
I believe that diffusion transfer, the basis of the Polaroid
process, was also among the patents we didn't let them keep.
I could be wrong on this and would welcome an expert's
comment. Ed Meyers