Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 06:13 PM 10/20/1999 +0000, Mike Johnston wrote: > >Pentax beat even Zeiss's first multicoated >lens to market. In the late '60s and early '70s both Zeiss and Pentax >were working with Optical Coating Laboratories (? I have a poor memory >for descriptive names), which invented multicoating for the space >program. This is one of those passages where I should run a contest to see who can spot all of the errors. The short answer, of course, has nothing to do with any "Optical Coating Laboratories". A number of houses were actively researching multi-coating technologies in the 1960's. Zeiss and Asahi explored the creation of a joint camera venture; in the course of this, they pooled their multi-coating work and, when the joint venture fell through, both had full rights to the process. Zeiss was first to have multi-coated lenses on the market, by several years, but these were technical and scientific applications sold in the later 1960's. Zeiss did not begin to use multi-coating on photographic objectives until early 1972, and had fully transited by late 1974. I do not know when Asahi began to produce multi-coated lenses, but it was in that same time-frame. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!