Originally Posted by
Cheshire
Sorry to be so late to this thread, but thought I could help a bit since I worked at Goerz in Pittsburgh during 1970.
Goerz had two very different businesses. First, their lines of view and process camera lenses, most of which in 1970 were being manufactured in Mineola, LI, NY. Second, in Pittsburgh they made mainly large rate tables, i.e. test equipment for inertial guidance systems. In this, Contraves was a local competitor. I personally was working with others in Pittsburgh at Goerz on a project for NASA, the Lunar Geological Exploration Camera. This was a small, handheld camera for use by the astronauts on the lunar surface that included a pair of 35mm lenses for recording a stereo view plus a 135mm telephoto between the two 35mm lenses for details of the scenes. All shutters fired simultaneously. The cameras were completed and awaiting final acceptance testing when the project was cancelled. I never found out the reason for the cancellation. After the cancellation, I was transferred to one of the other Kollmorgen subsidiaries: Macbeth, of densitometer, color measurement, and color viewing hood fame.
Some time after I was transferred the Goerz lens business was sold to Schneider Optics. No one familiar with the quality of the Goerz lenses was especially happy about this. While Schneider always made good lenses, the factor that made Goerz lenses so superior was the semi-custom nature of their manufacturing. At Goerz, as glass elements were assembled, they were put on a bench and adjusted for the optimum separation of the elements. Then the lens barrel would be machined to exactly match those two specific pieces of glass. The entire lens was built up this way. Very time consuming and expensive. At one point Kern from Switzerland said that they could build lenses using the Goerz design that would have the same or better quality by using mass production and tighter tolerances. So, Goerz sent them one of their designs and Kern made a small batch of lenses to show what tighter tolerances and mass production could do. When the lenses arrived at Goerz, not one of the Kern lenses passed the Georz QC requirements.
Interestingly, at Goerz in 1970 the EVP had left Hungry after the Revolution of 1956. He was very partial to his countrymen. Consequently, the large machine shop we had was filled almost exclusively with Hungarian immigrants. I have never seen a group argue as much as these guys did. I was about 23 at the time and thought it the most dysfunctional place I had ever seen. It took me months to realize that the arguments were a form on entertainment for these guys. No one took any of the arguments seriously. But they were in fact some of the nicest, most caring guys I've yet to meet ... they just never made it obvious. If I asked for a part to be fabricated within a week, they would spend the next 30 minutes telling me why it would take them at least three weeks to get it to me. Then after an argument that they all thoroughly enjoyed, the would go make the part and have it sitting on my desk by the next morning. One time upon arriving a work I found that a critical part on my Ducati motorcycle had broken I was was lucky to not have killed myself on the way to work. The closest Ducati dealer was about 30 miles away and I now had no transportation. So, one of the mechanical engineers came out and sketched up a drawing of what would replace the part and gave it to the Hungarian machinists. By mid-afternoon they had fabricated a new part for me out of some super-quality stainless that was scrap from another project .... and no one would even let me buy them a coke as a thank you.
So, in case you haven't figured it out by now, I thought that Goerz in 1970 made some pretty spectacular products and had a staff of great people. It was one of the best jobs I ever had, I work with some great people, and I was given responsibilities far in excess of what my age would have normally suggested.
Sorry I can't provide greater information about specific lenses, but if anyone wants more info about the company in those days, I'll be glad to add whatever I can.
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