Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 04:32 PM 11/27/1999 -0800, Eric Welch wrote: >Doesn't it go back to 1827 or so? I seem to remember reading that date >somewhere. Karl Kellner founded the firm as a general optical works in 1849, three years after Carl Zeiss had done the same at Jena. Although the firm's initial business was in field glasses and telescopes for the gentry and aristocracy, by 1855, that had been hied off to the Hensoldt concern (now a Zeiss subsidiary, still in Wetzlar, where virtually all Zeiss binoculars are manufactured). Kellner died in 1855, and his widow remarried; her new husband, Friedrich Belthle, took over the firm. He brought in a young Ernst Leitz I in 1862 and left him the business when he died in 1869. The firm was to remain a family business until twenty years ago. I believe microscopes were all that was produced at Leitz until the first decade of this century; certainly, they had moved back into binoculars before World War I, as Hensoldt could no longer meet demand, and added cine projectors in the years right before the First War. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!