After reading the recent thread on "who invented SMC" (again ;(,
I decided to throw oil into the fire here:
1) Even on AOHC pages, it's said that MC was developed by OCLI, US company
doing work for NASA. Asahi licensed (parts?) of the process to form SMC.
//that's what's AOHC article says.
now information to the contrary, from my friend a (collector):
(rephrased by myself)
Around 1967, Zeiss foundation decided to "scrap" Zeiss Ikon (which was not
producing enough profit), and entered negotiations with Asahi. Goal:
producing of camera bodies and lenses in Japan but to Zeiss design & QC.
This connection continued for 3-4 years but then Asahi determined that
Japanese hojme market wouldn't buy Japanese made Zeiss lenses.
>From this cooperation, came pooling of research into multicoating techs,
which resulted in both companies claiming multicoating at the same time.
The remnants of this cooperation may be even the K mount, which some claim
been at least codeveloped by Zeiss for use on the joint Asahi-Zeiss camera
(after all, Asahi pirated the popular M42 mount invented by Zeiss
Ikon/Zeiss Ikon VEB /east/).
The information comes from joint Asahi-Zeiss press releases between 1966
and 1972, and various sources on Zeiss history (e.g. The Zeiss Compendium
by Barringer & Small). Also, Asahi was supposed to give NASA a stipulation
when NASA acquired MC optics from them, as NASA had previously been
obtaining such gear from Zeiss. Zeiss wrote NASA a confirmation that Asahi
had the rights to use the process.
Please understand that I do not have access to "Western" photo-history
literature. Most of the historical literature about photography I have is
either dealing mainly with pre-WWII photography or dealing only about US
photography. So this is all information I heard from my friend.
Also, to the issue of T coating somebody mentioned: Lens coating was being
researched long before WWII, but all the attempts were not much working. In
fact, about turn of the century somebody saw that old lenses with sort of
haze/"coat" on the elements produce better pictures than brand new lenses.
The haze was just monomolecular so it acted as a anti-reflective layer.
Many approaches were tried, but only one proved to be stable and hard
enough was one by Zeiss, developed before WWII - vacuum coating of hard
substances on the glass. They called such lenses "V" for Vergüted I think,
and some "T" for Treated. Other companies followed.
Actually, I don't give a damn if the SMC on my lenses was developed by
Zeiss, Pentax or both together, and who did first Multicoating layers. I
think that somewhat stable MC must have been researched quite a long time
before SMC was marketed, by several companies. After all, Fuji claimed to
be using EBC on some TV lenses even back in 1960s (as said by AOHC
article). And scientists must have been trying some of it even before.
It is maybe more like who developed the first commercialy usable, durable
multicoating. From my information, it was joint Asahi & Zeiss.
I said I don't give a damn, but it of course interests me (but not enough
to start some flame war - I just presented information known to me). Camera
history is an interest to me (specially history of lenses... a question for
you: was there any cooperation between designers of Planar and Biometar
/these lenses are virtually same, except Planar has splitted first element
into two, and Biometar has splitted second element into two/ ? :)
Frantisek (please, please, CC a copy of your message to my personal
address of [EMAIL PROTECTED] too, because I have moved to the NOMAIL list
- too much mails with the MZ-S here :)
P.S> I am so sad! I was just told that MZ-S will not be introduced before
Summer into Czech republic :(
-
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