PPE lens

[peter brooks]

I picked this up on that auction site a while back. It's about 90mm tall with a barrel diameter of 65mm.

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As you can see it has 'PPE UK PAT APP FOR' on the barrel. Googling PPE currently brings up thousands of results for (er...) personal protective equipment, but I did find out that they were a divsion of Pillkington (UK glass manufacturers) and later had a dedicated factory in Wales.

The aperture 'notation' is amateurish (it does say 'approx'!) but the iris is 10 bladed and the whole thing certainly isn't of lightweight construction (it's all metal).

The back of the flange has the word 'original' scratched on it, and scratched on the barrel is '185mm (8 elements)'.

The very front portion unscrews with a particularly long thread (about 15mm), and houses what appears to be a single, thin element of negative power (I hope that is the right term - it makes my fingers look very slightly smaller when viewed through it). The fact that it has such a long thread makes me think it might be for some kind of adjustment?

I did find a page of PPE patents at https://patents.justia.com/assignee/pilkington-p-e-limited (some refer to lenses, many don't) - but of course 'patent applied for' isn't the same as 'patent granted'.

I've yet to get it on a lens board but would be interested to hear any views on what purpose it was intended for.

[pgk]

It looks very similar to a lens that I have, also made by Pilkington Perkin-Elmer - a UK/US collaboration which only lasted for a short time. The lens would have been made in St Asaph in North Wales and mine is a 60mm 1:1 lens covering 'medium format' I think. Mine has an unpainted diaphragm too, which causes it to flare a bit. I think that these lenses were intended for some form of copier unit and although I have a friend who works for a descendent company, they seem to be shrouded in the mystery of time, in that they were made too long ago (1970/80s) for many records to have been retained. I think that it is possible that the long threaded portion may retain an IR absorbing section? I suspect that these lenses were made in small numbers and this may explain the taped on apertures - they may even have been prototypes?

[ic-racer]

Good find, PPE is in short supply here.

[Effeegee]

Yes a random post from a newbie as a result of an internet search. In 1976 I was sold a 'PPE' lens as a possible 8x10" enlarger lens for use in creating film positives for silk screen printing. It was billed as 'military surplus' by the retailer in Brixton who indeed had lots of strange surplus equipment. As with your lens the only markings are PPE 1:1 lens but it is without mounting flange and has an unmarked aperture slide. After a clumsy effort I test mounted it on bellows and tried it out on a digital SLR concluding that it was not a practical proposition for my interests. Many years on I have not found a use and have no idea what use it might be put to or how. Have you used it in anger? Or found out anything more about it?

Any information or suggestions for use would help me. It deserves a better life than a paperweight.

[Mark J]

PPE made a number of lenses for the print industry , during the 1970's ; that side of the business faded out in the 80's - too much competition !
It will very likely be aimed at copying ( ie. macro work ) at 1:1 or a range either side of this ( maybe 3:1 to 1:3 ) . The presence of the long thread and hence movement of one element could indeed be an adjustment, and it might help improve performance at difference reproduction ratios.
It looks like a prototype, with the hand-drawn aperture scale !
These lenses were generally aimed at fairly large object/image sizes.

It looks very similar to a lens that I have, also made by Pilkington Perkin-Elmer - a UK/US collaboration which only lasted for a short time.
You are sort-of correct in that the actual Pilkington/Perkin-Elmer collaboration only lasted a few years. However the site continues ( via Pilkington Group, Pilkington Optronics, Thales Optronics, and now 'Qioptiq UK' ) to the present day. I have worked there ( apart from 18 months at Zeiss ) since 1987.
Our main lines of work since the 1980's are -
Night vision objectives and eyepieces
Infra-red objective and Zooms in the 8-12um and 3-5um bands
Head-Up displays for military and commercial aircraft ( we make more the half of the units sold worldwide ).

Mark Jeffs ( Optical Designer )

[peter brooks]

PPE made a number of lenses for the print industry...

Mark, many thanks for all that info. It's great to have some history recorded here for others to find in the future - and good to know that the business is still going!

As for the lens - I still haven't got it mounted on a lensboard but will report back when I do :)

[Jody_S]

You are sort-of correct in that the actual Pilkington/Perkin-Elmer collaboration only lasted a few years. However the site continues ( via Pilkington Group, Pilkington Optronics, Thales Optronics, and now 'Qioptiq UK' ) to the present day. I have worked there ( apart from 18 months at Zeiss ) since 1987.
.

Mark Jeffs ( Optical Designer )

Interesting info, I gather you can't tell us about most of their work. Are there any PPE lenses out there that might be of particular interest to photographers? Sharp process lenses designed for 1:1 or 1:4 are rather common.

[Mark J]

Well, I can talk about quite a lot, but it's limited when we talk about military stuff.
Our business has never been really geared-up for high-volume work - because we always did a lot of engineering-heavy small-numbers work for the MOD ( and DOD ), so the overheads were against us, to compete in eg. the photo world.
If it's the 70's we're talking about , we did 'industrial' lenses ie. for copying, or telecine transfer lenses, even a couple of photocopier lenses for Hanimex at one point c.1970 . This is all still documented in our computer archives.
However if you're looking for infinity-corrected objective lenses for photo work there'll be hardly anything suitable. There are some long focus Apo reconnaissance lenses out there, but I don't think they are much use for normal shooting !