Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/09

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Subject: Re: [Leica] RE: Eric & Tudors
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 11:25:18 -0500

At 10:41 AM 11/9/1999 -0000, B. D. Colen wrote:
>Leica's giving free cameras to Queen Eliz. proves my point about their
>twisted idea of marketing:
>

BD

Someday, you'll check out the facts before opining.  It would make your
postings a bit more authoritative!

Leica has given away a slew of Leicas.  The first was to Count Ferdinand
von Zeppelin (a friend of the Leitz family -- and Oscar Barnack did take
the first photograph ever shot from an airship, over Wetzlar in the summer
of '14, with the UR-Leica) in 1925.  Auguste Picard, the aerial trendsetter
(and father of the bathyscaphe, as well), received a II in 1932.  Dr
Gunther Dyhrenfurth, the noted Himalayan explorer, received a III in 1933;
his son, Norman, the head of the first American Everest Expedition in 1963,
received a IIIf in '53.  (Leica had first been taken to Everest in '33 by
Larry Wager;  I'm still trying to locate his pictures.)  The Dalai Lama was
gifted a IIIf in '51, and Dr Albert Schweitzer received the same type of
camera that same year.  Henri Cartier-Bresson received an M3 in '55.  Sten
Kruckenhauser, Fulvio Roiter, Emil Schulthess, Arthur Rothstein, Alfred
Eisenstaedt, Paul Wolff, were all professional photographers gifted with
Leicas.  The inventors of both the Kodachrome and Agfachrome processes were
each given a Leica.  Und so weiter.

The gifts have been all over the board, with Elizabeth's two cameras being
a drop in the bucket.  For that matter, Pandit Nehru, Dwight Eisenhower,
and Konrad Adenauer seem the only other heads of state to be so honoured.
(And, in any event, the Queen's gifts were years back, in '58 and '65.)

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!