Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 10:43 PM 4/25/06 -0400, Walt Johnson wrote: >Marc: > >For all their inept engineering ability the Russians did manage to beat >us into space. They were lucky to steal more Nazi scientists than we did. Walt That is both a cheap shot and untrue. The Soviets had a really sound scientific base and the history of science is replete with fine Russian names indicating the depth of their capacity -- one of the finest of late Tsarist composers, for instance, was also a world-class chemist. And Soviet engineering was not inept, either. The problem with the Soviets was a horrid economic system which allowed very little capitalization for the exploitation of scientific advances. Of the German scientists and engineers who chose to leave Germany, and many did not, the US obtained the services of approximately 2/3 of them under OPERATION PAPERCLIP, and the British got most of the rest -- the British managed to score all of the German atomic scientists save for two or three who fell into the hands of the Soviets, while the US got most of the rocketry engineers. In the end, very few went East save for a few who were dedicated Communists or who were junior enough to recognize that they would do better in the Soviet Union than in the West. And, of course, the West got all of the senior optical scientists from Carl Zeiss Jena save for Ernst Wandersleb, and that issue is a bit complex: Wandersleb had been removed by the Nazis from Zeiss as his wife was Jewish. After the end of the War -- and, yes, she survived, thanks to the head of Zeiss, Heinz K?ppenbender, and the intervention at his request of Speer -- the two Zeiss entities offered him employment and a full pension as he chose, and he elected to remain at Jena, and retired in 1957. (Wandersleb had served as the chief assistant to Rudolph in the development of the Tessar, later reworked it to allow it to be widened to f/2.8, then developed the Biotar design and, finally, instructed his own chief assistant, Hans Sauer, to recompute Rudolph's six-element Planar in light of lens coatings, leading to the genesis of today's bevy of Planar five-element designs.) So, no, the Soviets did quite a bit on their own, and the US got the lion's share of German scientists. Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!