Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/07/29

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: Lens Designs and history
From: 4season <4season@boulder.net>
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 19:41:28 -0600

Marc James Small wrote:
> 
> These lenses were all protected by patent rights,
> as were the camera designs and the lens mount designs and the rangefinder
> designs and so forth.  Didn't matter to the Japanese:  they just stole
> away, happy as bloody moonshiners at a hot mash party, delighting in the
> knowledge that the Allied Control Commission had ruled that German
> companies could not protect their patent rights in Japan.  Period.
> 
Aw, cut them some slack, Marc; there was a matter of postwar rebuilding
to think about, and building stuff people around the world want to buy
is a good way to raise cold hard cash. Beats being on the dole queue
indefinitely.

My dad and grandfather liked cameras, and both knew of the Zeiss,
Rollei, Minox and Leica brands, but their real love was the Japanese
35mm SLR. My dad had a good-sized Exakta outfit into the '70s, but I
don't recall him using it much, and it looked long-neglected. The
Rollei, he'd use here and there. The Nikon F2 Photomic, on the other
hand, he loved. He surely could've afforded an M4 or Leicaflex and a
number of primes (that Nikon gear was expensive, and it wasn't just
Ehrenreich Photo-Optical's  prices, either) but for whatever reason,
just wasn't interested. 

Jeff

PS: Whatever became of EPOI's operations? And for that matter, what's
the story behind Honeywell/Pentax and Bell & Howell/Mamiya?