Re: [Rollei] Why the 6-element lens for 3.5Fs

[David Seifert <dseifert >]

QG,

While I can't comment on the living/working conditions in and around the CZ 
facilities in the immediate post-war era I would suggest that the quality 
of their efforts were never compromised.

Have you read Marc James Small's and Charles Barringer's history of the 
post war Zeiss-Ikon?  There was a legal dispute over the use of the 
Zeiss-Ikon brand name as well. I recommend this book to anyone interested 
in understanding the post-war incarnations of these entities.  It contains 
a thorough exposition of this Opton business as well as outlining the 
product evolutions.  Your suggestion that things weren't somehow "up to 
snuff" at the re-formed companies until well into the 50's just doesn't 
hold water to me.  It was 1950 when Z-I release the completely redesigned 
(by necessity, the Soviets made off with the pre-war tools) Contax 
IIa.  Most consider this one of the finest examples of precision 
manufacturing ever.  No Leica or even Rollei can compare to the fit and 
finish of these cameras.  By 1954 the 21/4 Biogon was shipping.  A landmark 
design from CZ.

Sometimes a rose is just a rose.  The Opton designation was just a legal 
necessity, nothing more nothing less.

David

At 09:34 PM 5/2/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>David Seifert wrote:
>
> > Legal process is what allowed them to drop the Opton prefix.  A western
> > court's judgement that declared the Oberkochen company as the legal owner
> > of the Carl Zeiss trademark in the non-Warsaw Pact countries removed the
> > need for the Opton nomenclature.  Nothing else.
>
>Yes. But that may have meant something to the people working at Zeiss too.
>No longer just a "subsidiary" and contested at that, but the Venerable
>Mother Firm themselves! ;-)
>
>And dropping the Opton prefix happened in the early 1950s. I can imagine
>that things than still were on the mend after the mayhem of WW2. Zeissians
>were still settling into their new life in Oberkochen. With many things,
>work related and non-work related getting a bit better every year.
>
>All that reflecting in the standard of product quality does not sound too
>far fetched to me. Products are not made by tools alone.
>
>Anyway, did the legal battle not continue until the reunification of Zeiss
>East and West in the late 1990s?

Best Regards,

David Seifert
dseifert  

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