Zeiss Historica Spring 2004
I love prototypes! I’ve written about Kodak prototypes of the 1930s and others by Voigtländer, but one I’ve never heard of was the Prototype 132, a cleanly designed, but revolutionary camera that was designed in the late 1950s. Had the camera been produced, it would have been a pioneer in many regards.
Pg 2. Fritz Jakobsmeier was an apprentice in Jena in the 1930s, but his promising career was derailed by WWII, leading him to a new career as a watchmaker in the United States. This is his story.
Pg 8. Contaflex SLR instruction books. Owner’s manuals for the many versions of Zeiss-Ikon’s popular SLR show as much variation and evolution as the cameras themselves.
Pg 12. Ernst Wandersleb, aerial photographer.
Pg 14. Hartmut Thiele’s Fabrikationsbuch Photooptik Carl Zeiss Jena and the real works. A detailed study of the information of lens serial numbers contained in this book reveal some discrepancies in what is generally a very useful compilation.
Pg 18. The Voigtländer Prototype 132 – the camera that might have changed the world. Have you ever seen a Voigtländer SLR with a focal plane shutter, TTL CdS auto exposure and an interchangeable lens mount? Well you might have, had this prototype ever made it into production.
Pg 22. It’s commonly believed that the Germans didn’t start coating their lenses until after the war, but work on multi-lens coatings began as early as 1935 at Carl Zeiss Jena.
Pg 24. ZHS Annual Meeting 2003