Mark Pickett wrote:
I was thinking, interestingly enough...Since Pentax was a Zeiss(?)
trademark
that Asahi bought -
That's not sure. Zeiss Jena only used the Pentax name in eastern countries,
for their line of 8mm cine projectors.
They also registered the Pentax brand name in South Africa (and perhaps
Finland?). For that reason Asahi had to market their early Pentax models as
Asahiflex there.
According to early info from Asahi Opt Co., Pentax was just short for
"Pentaprism-Asahiflex" which couldn't be enough a proper name (those were
the clever days at AOC, far before *ist-series and such odd naming).
Apparently, Asahi started using the Pentax name worldwide without even
knowing that Zeiss Jena was already using it somewhere. Then they eventually
found some kind of agreement, leaving the Pentax name to Asahi.
Pentax = PENTaprism + contAX - right? I've read this in several places
I'm afraid it's a simple guess by book authors. In fact Zeiss never adopted
the Pentax name for their SLR's.
And thus is
Pentacon = PENTAprism + CONtax??
That could be, but it also could be just a name sounding well.
Dario
