[rollei_list] The PX System and Cameras

At 05:12 PM 1/29/2007, Jeff Kelley wrote:
>Marc wrote:
>
>>In addition, the PX system stocked either throughout the world.
>>
>
>Interesting.  My "MX-EVS" still has a small, yellowing sitcker inside the
>back indicating the original owner purchased it via a US military exchange
>in Germany.
>
>Are there records showing how many cameras sold through the PX system?
>Perhaps a lot of Rolleiflexes made it to the US this way in the 40s and 50s?

Jeff
When the PX system in Europe was established in the summer of 1945, it was anxious to give GI's a way to spend their money in US-controlled venues, so the PX system immediately formed a relationship with Leitz to hawk Leica cameras, a move which arguably saved Leitz. Franke & Heidecke was in the British Zone of Occupation, as was Volkswagen, and the British attempted to sell off these concerns to British companies -- Lord Rootes famous remark that the VW Beetle "would never sell" is one of the classic miscalls of automotive history, but then Henry Ford refused to even visit the plant or to meet with a delegation from VW, so Lord Rootes was in good company. From 1945 to 1948, F&H was able to market its cameras fairly easily in the UK but Ross and Ensign and Ilford and Wray all declined to buy the works. By 1948, the economic pressures afflicting Europe in general and the British Empire especially caused the US to pressure the UK to reverse its position. This led to F&H selling its cameras in the PX system and VW surviving to become the behemoth it is today. (And, yes, I just sold my Sunbeam Alpine, spawn of Lord Rootes, while my 1984 Audi 4000S is doing just fine as my daily driver, and thank you for the asking!)
The PX system in the Far East stocked German cameras until around 1950. The US Military Government in Japan and the Far East Commission had pressured the Japanese to convert from building military to civilian goods, and one industry of special interest was the conversion of companies producing bombsights, gunsights, rangefinders, and aerial recon cameras to the production of consumer civilian cameras, so that a flood of Canon and Nikon cameras began to be available by 1949, and these gradually replaced the German cameras in the PX system.
The PX system in the US was more slowly established due to a lack of perceived need -- that is, the military folks were not going to go hit some Geisha house or spend their occupation currency in a German bierhaus, so purchases by the military would not threaten foreign exchange. Still, the PX system in the US seems to have offered mainly US-made cameras such as Kodak Medalists and Ciroflex TLR's and the like, though German cameras were available, generally by special order. (I can drive nine miles over to the Fort Lee PX today and get almost any digital whiz-bang I want other than the Leica M8. I will be there tomorrow but to visit the Class VI store to resupply my stockage of that most vital of photographic chemistry, Johnny Walker Red, so I shall probably give the digital section a miss -- but then I seem to be the only person on the Rollei List unable to figure out Photoshop, so sticking to chemistry I know and avoiding electrons seems to be a most wise approach to things.)
I am not certain just which records of the Army-Air Force Exchange System have survived but we USians generally avoid the sort of foolishness which afflicted the Royal Navy, who tossed out almost all of the stored logbooks of its ships for three hundred years in 1947, or of Zeiss Ikon, which "recycled" almost all of their corporate and production records in early 1973 to the horror of the Grand Old Man of Zeiss, Heinz Küppenbender. The PX records probably passed to the National Archives in the Washington area but I am not certain just which repository houses them: it would probably be Suitland but I do not know for certain. I do know that none of the records of the Army's handling of the Zeiss Lens Collection made it to the Archives for reasons which remain obscure but which probably were purged to hide the fact that the Army gave these lenses to Porters for disposal under pressure from Robert MacNamara.
I am sorry to have rattled on so long but, as a certain most distinguished Professor of Old English at Oxford remarked in another context, "the tale grew in the telling". 

Marc


msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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