[rollei_list] Cooke Amotal and Fair-Trade Laws
- From: Marc James Small <msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:08:01 -0400
At 09:34 AM 9/8/05 -0500, Peter J Nebergall wrote:
>T&H lenses had some relation to Cooke. I have a Cooke Amotal in Leitz
>screw.. that I suppose was once on a reid.
I doubt that any LTM Cooke Amotal ever graced a Reid save in some sort of
fit of absentmindedness.
The Taylor, Taylor and Hobson f/2 2"Amotal was the standard lens on the
abortive Bell & Howell Foton camera. When B&H pulled the plug, they had a
stock of lenses on hand and promptly marketed them to some New York house,
quite possibly Peerless, who shpped the lenses overseas to be fitted into
mounts for regular 35mm cameras. The actual conversion was performed in
Italy. This would have been around 1953.
The US Fair Trade Laws of the era allowed the manufacturer to set the sales
price on its products so long as they were sold with only factory-produced
items. Thus, Leitz could dictate the sales price on, say, a IIIf camera if
it were sold with a Leitz Elmar or Summitar lens. However, the
manufacturer lost this power if the item was sold with an aftermarket
addition, so a discount house could dig deep if it could sell a Leica
camera body with an aftermarket lens. (I suspect that the garage industry
which produced the 1.5/5.8 "Leica Sonnar" and "Sonnarex" lenses in the
later 1940's was an effort to work into this marekt but it was quashed for
reasons which still remain murky. Perhaps the Gehlendienst had something
to do with it!)
In the end, a number of these excellent lenses were fitted into exceedingly
crude LTM mounts and were sold by the discount houses in New York and other
major US cities. Much rarer are those in Contax RF BM, though these do
exist as well.
The lens is a really solid performer and the glass elements were made in
the UK but the lens is really a combination of American greed and Italian
ingenuity.
You might wish to consult your copy of that magnificent and magisterial
tome, NON-LEITZ LEICA THREADMOUNT LENSES: A 39mm DIVERSITY, published by
Wittig in Germany and drafted by one <ah-HEM> Marc James Small, where this
lens is discussed in detail.
The Reid lenses are discussed there, as well, and are also covered in
detail in Hans P Rajner's LEICA COPIES work.
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
NEW FAX NUMBER: +540-343-8505
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