[rollei_list] Lens Designs and the Soviet World
- From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:55:52 -0400
At 11:30 PM 10/7/2009, Eric Goldstein wrote:
>Marc -
>
>If it is truly identical, and not licensed, it would be illegal if the
>patent was still active. You cannot tell from block diagrams; you need
>prescriptions, glass types, engineering specifications.
Eric
There is much you seem not to know about the
relations between the former Warsaw Pact and the
West in terms of patent protections. It is
probably best not to try to teach your grandmother how to such eggs ...
First, the Soviets had open rights to use any
German intellectual properties as of 9 MAY 1945,
and could use any Warsaw Pact intellectual
properties thereafter. No one in the West
challenged this. The US, UK, French, &c, had the
same rights to German intellectual properties as
of 8 MAY 1945. No, Leitz never sued Reid or
Kardon for their copies of the Leica cameras, as
such lawsuits would have been tossed out. And a
Jupiter-8 lens, a copy of the 2/5cm CZJ Sonnar,
was fully protected under the same condition.
Second, the arguments were essentially between
Pentacon and Carl Zeiss and did not involve the
USSR in any way for such items. The thought of
Carl Zeiss licensing, say, the Arsenal Works to
produce a Planar design during the life of the
USSR is absurd -- the Soviets claimed that this
was not necessary, and the US told Zeiss to sit
on it as we had larger fish to fry. Once the
USSR became the "bweela SSSR", things changed,
and Zeiss has all sorts of agreements with former
Warsaw-Pact and CIS factories.
Third, the USSR cheerfully just stole Western
designs as they needed them and produced them to
meet their own needs. I doubt that even the 2gen
Night-Vision devices could have survived a
challenge by ITT Night Vision Labs, but these
were not imported into the US until ITT was
invested in 3gen and specifically surrendered
their rights under the 2gen patents. The night
vision devices you now find in hunting supply
stores are all "2 1/2 gen" devices from Russia or
the Ukraine as the 3gen and later gear is not
available to the public but only to the military
and to law enforcement, with a few limited
exceptions. (And the US-made gear is vastly more
expensive: KMZ can make a profit selling 2 1/2
gen gear for $400, while ITT hawks their basic sets at $12,000 or so.)
Fourth, I have far more than lens diagrams and do
have the optical glass designations (Schott
catalogue) for many of these, but Carl Zeiss has
never released any of the glass data on lenses
when they could avoid it, and most of what I have
from Oberkochen are taken from supporting
documents used when Zeiss applied for a
government contract. For instance, Zeiss Ikon
supplied Contarex cameras and lens sets to NASA,
as Hasselblad did later. Some of these were
purchased under "sole source of supply"
contracts, where technical details can be
suppressed, but most were in open bids, and so
the details can be found for some of these. But
trying to find the details of, say, the 2.8/80
Planar used in the Rolleiflex 2.8C and later is
quite difficult as F&H refused to put these up to
public bid, there only major bid being with the
T's sold to the Royal Navy and these were
purchased under a truncated contract which only
listed the results of lens testing and not the
composition of the lenses. (Trust me: we spend
a lot of time over on the Zeiss Ikon Collectors'
Group dealing with the "recomputed" Tessar and
would love to have the optical glass characteristics.)
What a lens diagram does admirably is to exclude,
and not to include. As a result, we know that
the 2.8/8cm Biotar T used in the 2.8B is not
identical to the Planar used in the 2.8C nor to
the JSK Xenotar, though it resembles the Xenotar
more than it does the Planar. Thus, we know from
the lens diagrams that we have three separate
designs at play, related designs, perhaps, but not identical.
But, again, I have a lot more information if I
can find that circular tuit and dig out the
bottom boxes in my bay of the garage.
And I am lazy. I still owe Peter K the scan of
that article on the Leica M3 which was still
operable after falling a thousand feet or
whatever, and I do know where that is. Retirement is great ....
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
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