In my field the few books were not written by the people who know, they are too busy, but by personal PR types, who are often well qualified academics at Universities. Making a name for themselves. Only a couple of dozen people in the world are able to judge their books, I have yet to see a good one.
FWIW.As far as optics are concerned I do not personally know the respected people you mention. Perhaps I have translated my experience too much onto other disciplines.
On 5 Oct, 2009, at 19:47, Marc James Small wrote:
At 02:09 PM 10/5/2009, Frank Dernie wrote: >Hi Austin, >that sounds right to me. IME often the "famous" guy in a company is>the guy with the best personal PR skills, not necessarily the one with>the most talent/influence.>I would be very surprised if it were true that the person named in the>patent was not the inventor. >Maybe Kingslake is one of the personal PR guys and likes people to >think he did more than he actually did??? >The literature is not always/often too reliable.Good God. Don't demean Kingslake, who was a cautious and thorough scholar. He was the son-in-law of Conrady, another grand optical analyst, and understood the evolution of optical design very well. He is wrong on his analysis of the evolution of the five-element Planar but his error was an honest one and caused much merriment at Oberkochen in the Directors' mess when he first made the error in 1962. To my knowledge, that was Kingslake's only serious error.What Kingslake noted was that patents were unreliable for a number of reasons. They tend to be chronologically suspect, as the patents are often taken out years after production of a given lens started. They tend to lack details necessary to duplicate the item, as Richard has noted -- they often, for instance, lack the specifics on the optical glasses used -- if you do not patent something, then it can be held as a trade secret. So, the patents reveal only the broadest outline of a given lens's design. (I am surprised that the US Patent Office issued the patents to which Richard refers for this very reason -- to receive a US patent, a person must be able to duplicate the item without more, and this is not the case with most modern lens patents. However, you REALLY have to read the entire description to understand the patent and these often run to dozens or hundreds of pages, some of these pages being tables of mathematical formulae. The European patent offices have traditionally been more open to allowing a broad concept to be patented.)It is certain that the names on Zeiss and Leitz patents rarely reflect the actual designer of the lenses. In the German optical industry, you are expected to have a PhD before you are hired, so there is a distinct shortage of what you sneeringly call "PR guys". Again, take a look at the actual designs we know Bertele made, and see whose name is on the patent, or the same with Rudolph and Wandersleb and Berek and Mandler. It is the custom in Germany for the actual designer of the lens to be compensated in cash and for him to then allow a lesser light to have the honor of the name on the patent in lieu of a bonus.Look to the Smakula patent on lens coatings. This was initially taken out in 1935 in the name of a minor co-worker and was then classified by the German military. Smakula did not get his name on the patent until the US Army insisted on this when Smakula was sent to MIT under OPERATION PAPERCLIP. My source for that is Smakula's grandson, who was told it by Alexander himself.Heinz Küppenbender, the head of Zeiss from 1936 until 1973, credited Sauer with every part of the evolution of the six-element symmetrical Planar of 1896 to the five-element design of 1949. Küppenbender was interviewed on this very point by the late Bill Stone who passed the tale on to me when I was drafting my part of the ZEISS COMPENDIUM. Bill later interviewed Sauer on the same points, and their stories meshed seamlessly, and neither was a prevaricator -- Küppenbender was honest enough to get himself tried by the Nazis in 1943 when he headed the German optical industry for shielding workers from the death camps, and then to get himself tried by the Allies in 1947 as a Nazi. He was abrupt and very outspoken. And he and Sauer were not social friends or cronies of any sort. And Ernst Wandersleb sent Sauer a very complimentary letter in 1950 on the completion of the Planar design to the five- element one.To keep the record clear, Paul Rudolph designed the six-element symmetrical Planar in 1896. This lens performed wonderfully but, due to the number of surfaces, was prone to flare. Rudolph then developed the Tessar of 1902. Shortly afterward, he hired Ernst Wandersleb as his personal assistant, and assigned to him the task of trying to get the Tessar to work at apertures wider than f/4.5, a task on which Wandersleb broke his heart for twenty years, though he did produce the rather unsatisfactory f/2.8 Tessar for the Prewar Contax, a design not revived Postwar. When Rudolph retired as Director of Photographic Lens Design at Jena in 1920, Wandersleb took his place. In the 1930's, he hired Sauer and, when Smakula perfected Dr Bauer's suggestions for lens coatings in 1935, Wandersleb assigned to Sauer the task of revisiting the Planar design to see whether it could be simplified in the light of new optical glasses and in lens coatings. Sauer then devoted a decade to this work. Wandersleb was forced to leave Zeiss in 1942 as his wife was Jewish, though Küppenbender continued his full salary through the War years.In 1946, Wandersleb was reunited with his wife, who had been protected from the death camps by Küppenbender. However, he was an old man and remained in Jena until he and his wife died in the early 1960's. He did some work at CZJ but told the guys at Oberkochen to take Sauer as their Chief of Photographic Lens Design, and they did so. There is some surviving correspondence between Wandersleb and Sauer over the 1949 five-element lens which runs along the lines of, "Dr Sauer: I always knew you would do it!" and Wandersleb, late in life, sent Sauer another letter noting the various developments Sauer had made on the Planar design during the 1950's. I do not recall any mention of a Wynne in this correspondence.These guys were not "PR types": they were serious students of optical and camera design. Rudolph to Wandersleb to Sauer, Goldman to Küppenbender to Newin, the torch was passed. Not a "PR type" in the mix, just solid students of optical theory and mechanical design.Dr Kingslake was certainly not a "PR type", either, and his analysis of these men and their lives is interesting. Again, he was wrong on suggesting that Sauer abandoned the original Planar to produce the five-element design -- Sauer's notes survive and are available at Jena or Oberkochen and support the careful work done over fifteen years to make the six-element lens a five-element one.Patents are just not a reliable source unless you get the entire patent and read through it carefully and, even then, as Richard has noted, the lack of information in many of these patents on the optical glasses used makes the patents a very weak ground on which to base extravagant claims.I am not aware of any requirement under US law that the "actual" designer be credited on a patent application. This is probably not possible in the case of a lens: Bertele had over 200 assistants helping him to produce the 1.5/5cm Sonnar in 1931 and the calculations ran to a stack four feet in height: I have a photograph of Bertele grinning beside the stack when the lens was released under the "Mehr Lichte!" ad campaign (Goethe's last words, by the way, and a neat nexus of modern lens design with German Kultur).Marc msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir! --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org- Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
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