Zeiss Historica (1979 – 2016)

Today, like-minded enthusiasts gather together in virtual chat rooms, message boards, and online groups using social media.  If you have a passion for Corelle dishware, antique board games, or 1980 Chevrolet Citations, there’s going to be a group for you.

Back in 1979, it wasn’t so easy.  If you wanted to socialize and collaborate with other people with the same interests as you, you had to seek them out through classifieds in magazines, local church groups, or simply, word of mouth.

This is how the story of the Zeiss Historica Society began…

Introduction by Larry Gubas (November 2019)

The year was 1979, and Tom Schreiner was a upstate New York media consultant who had a strong Germanic bent.  There had long been a Leica Society and he felt that Zeiss was just as important if not more so.  Tom started to contact folks via the local photo societies, people who posted want ads in the Shutterbug magazine and local used photo shows that seemed to surround the larger US cities.

Tom set up a primary meeting in Toronto and an organizational meeting in Rochester in 1979.  He published a set of pamphlets following each meeting, and during the Rochester meeting organized the society and elected officers.  Tom Schreiner felt that he had done his part in the original organization and did not stand for office but encouraged others to do so.

From the beginning, most of the members were photo enthusiasts but there were also people who collected Microscopes, Binoculars, Astronomical Instruments, Military Devices and catalogs while others were interested in company history and personalities.  The firm’s organization and sister/merger firms expand the initial perspective.  We produced our first magazine format journal soon after at the initiative of Randall Scheid of Toronto, but he did not survive an automobile accident and Bill Stone stepped in to publish articles from interested members on all sorts of subjects.  We published twice yearly at first at 16 pages, and grew to 28 pages and added color to the cover under the next editor, Dr. John Scott.  We also published high quality copies of interesting Zeiss catalogs and documents.

We grew from 20 interested folks to nearly 500 on an international basis and attracted competent and knowledgeable authors.  We survived with paying members until 2016 when Father Time gradually took most of our members from us and we ran out of authorities.  We were still financially sound but decided to not continue publication of a product not worthy of our subject.  Our two remaining officers were now 77 and 80+ years of age.

Table of Contents

Below is a list of major topics from all 73 issues of Zeiss Historica.  They were produced from 1979 to 2016 when the group was dissolved.  The first two issues from 1979 and 1980 were called “Folios” and are indicated as such.  In every year between 1981 and 2016, there was a Spring and a Fall issue, except in 2014 which only had a single Spring/Fall issue.

At about 25 pages each, there’s over 1,800 pages of information compiled by Larry and other Zeiss historians for members in the Zeiss Historica Society.  The people who wrote the articles in each Zeiss Historica newsletter were experts in their particular area, and in most cases, witnessed the “golden era” of Zeiss-Ikon first hand.  Sadly, as people tend to do, many of them have since passed away and these articles are the only remnants of these stories available on the Internet today.

In early 2019, I talked to Larry Gubas who was the last President of the Zeiss Historica Society and got his blessing for sharing this information online.  His only request was to make it freely available and that I don’t charge anything for it.  Larry has been a Zeiss historian for a large part of his life and is considered by many to be an authority on all things Zeiss.

If you are interested in more of Larry’s work, I strongly recommend checking out his 890 page hard cover book, Zeiss and Photography. This book is the culmination of Larry’s lifetime worth of research into Zeiss.

Each article has it’s own page and will eventually have a searchable table of contents and short intro.  Re-typing summaries for all 73 issues has proven to be very time consuming, so as of November 2019, I have only completed a portion of the issues.  I will continue to update these as time permits.