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Thread: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

  1. #21

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    Re: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

    Bernice, the 38/4.5 Biogons Goerz made under license were badged Biogon and Aerogor. The 3"/4.5 Biogon Goerz made under license was badged Biogon and Aerogor. Goerz made other lenses for USAF, including the 6"/2.3 Supergor (covers 4.5" x 4.5"), 6"/6.3 Metrogon (covers 9" x 9"), and 6"/6.3 Planigon (covers 9" x 9"). This from my USAF data sheets, which are online at http://archive.org/details/USAF_lens_datasheets.

    Hycon was a military contractor, made, among other things, aerial cameras, bought lenses from Goerz American and other makers.

    I'm not sure whether any of the lenses Goerz made for aerial cameras were original Goerz designs. USAF bought the rights to designs, put contracts to make them up for bid. Hence Biogons from Zeiss, Goerz and Viewlex and Metrogons and Planigons from any number of makers.

    The 3"/6 Goerz Rectagon (surely Goerz' own, see the 1951 Goerz catalog on cameraeccentric.com) isn't mentioned in my USAF data sheets, but that proves nothing.

  2. #22

    Re: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

    Thank you for the memorable post. You must have known my father at Goerz -- Kenneth Kemp, who passed away in 2001

  3. #23

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    Re: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

    Quote Originally Posted by E. von Hoegh View Post
    http://www.acutronic.com/fileadmin/c..._ACUTRONIC.pdf If this is accurate, Contraves owned this division of Goerz in the late 60s or 1970.
    Nope, at the time I joined Goerz in February 1970, Contraves and Goerz were competitors with some very similar product lines ... and a number of people who had migrated from one company to the other in both directions. However, the relations between the two companies were quite cordial. In fact, I had called Contraves for a job interview first. It was the guy I talked with at Contraves, who although he took the appointment told me on the phone that he really didn't have any openings, who suggested that I call Goerz and both gave me the name I should call and said I should reference him. It was sometime after I was transferred to another Kollmorgen division that Goerz and Contraves became one company, but I can't off-hand remember who bought whom. Also, the lens business had been sold to Schneider before Goerz and Contraves became one.

  4. #24

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    Re: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

    Bernice,

    It looks like this timeline is fairly accurate, but you may have misread it a bit. Based upon the data points shown and the captions for those data points, here are approximate dates:

    1968 -- Kollmargen form Goerz Inland Systems

    1972 -- Contraves and Goerz are merged to form Contraves Goerz Corporation

    1974 -- Fecker acquired by Contraves Goerz

  5. #25

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    Re: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

    Except for the lenses used on the LGEC, I really wasn't involved with any of the other lenses being produced by Goerz at the time. However, the lens that most intrigued me was the most expensive lens that Goerz made at time. It fascinated me because it was optimized for 1 to 1 reproduction and cost about $10,000 ... enormously expensive at the time. It was made specifically for the manufacture of maps and had an extremely flat field with very low other aberrations.

    The other lens story that fascinated me was their trade show lenses. Goerz found that almost every time they exhibited at a trade show, at least one lens would grow legs and walk away on its own. This got to be very expensive very quickly. So, for every lens they took to a trade show, they took a "00" (double O) lens, meaning that the serial number started with two zeros. These lenses where manufactured with a front element and a rear element, but all of the other glass elements were missing. They would then weight it to make it feel like a real lens. Their reasoning was that at a trade show, no one ever put one of these lenses on a camera and took an image with it. These lenses were merely so people look look at them and feel them. So, only the 00 lenses ever went to trade shows. Did that stop lenses from being pilfered? Nope, not at all. Lenses still disappeared from trade show booths on a regular basis. However, they were now saving lots of money on these missing lenses since they cost almost nothing to manufacture. The really funny postscript to this story is that on a regular basis Goerz would be sent one of these lenses back with a cover letter saying something like, "Just bought this lens you manufactured and it doesn't seem to be working correctly. Can you please fix it for me?" All of these people received back the same form letter explaining that this was a non-funcitonal trade-show only demo lens that was stolen from a booth at the XYZ trade show on ABC date. The letter than ended something like, "Thank you for returning this to us. We greatly appreciate the return of our stolen property." We never heard anything for a second time from any of these people.

  6. #26

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    Re: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

    Yes, I definitely knew Ken Kemp, although after more than 40 years I can't remember more than his name. I'm sorry to hear that he is no longer among us.

    At this point, although I still vividly remember some of the people I worked with while at Goerz, I remember them more for their personalities than their names. There are probably 8 or 10 that I still remember, but the only name that comes to mind other than Coker's was the guy I reported to directly, a Swiss national whose first name was Leo (I think). I was impressed that he was born at home in a house that had been in his family for over 600 years. We also had a mechanical engineer who was a state motocross champion and a lens polisher who had been at Contraves just before Goerz. It was a great group of people.

  7. #27

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    Re: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

    What great reading, when you hold a lens and know someone or of someone who might have worked on it it adds a warm soft fuzzy romance to the whole dang thing and makes you want to never let your kids get their hands on it and flog it off at the pawn shop for diddly squat to get some crappy digi that will be landfill within 5 years.

  8. #28

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    Re: Goerz American corporate history more confusing that I'd thought

    There is even more appreciation of how many of these older lenses which were hand crafted if there are pencil markings still on the lens cells or hand engraved numbers on the barrel noting matching and other processes as these lenses were made. These lenses were simply works of art in their own way, a blending of science, technology and art resulting in a tool for artist to create expressive images with.

    Or part of what gives these lenses their individual personality. Not usually found in mass produced things common today.


    Bernice


    Quote Originally Posted by Colin D View Post
    What great reading, when you hold a lens and know someone or of someone who might have worked on it it adds a warm soft fuzzy romance to the whole dang thing and makes you want to never let your kids get their hands on it and flog it off at the pawn shop for diddly squat to get some crappy digi that will be landfill within 5 years.

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