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Thread: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

  1. #11

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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    Quote Originally Posted by Dugan View Post
    Wollensak named the coating " Wocote".
    Thank you for that clarification.

    David

  2. #12

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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    I'll agree that EK did not send lenses to B&J to be coated. However, owners of Kodak Anastigmats and Eastman Ektars may very well have done so. It also seems apparent that Kodak, Zeiss, and who else? were coating lenses during World War II, and when civilian production resumed, coating became standard practice across the industry.

    Here's a tangentially relevant story. As I said, I worked at the Hawk-Eye plant, a large complex built at various times between 1890-1944. In an interior courtyard there was an an enormous optics-coating machine, or its remnants. It was open to the elements and looked like an oven. It was long disused, as the optics division had moved to newer facilities many years before. Once, I was assigned to photograph it, since the company was considering removing it. But the newer buildings had been put up around it- there was no way this thing was going out through any door. So it stayed; it's probably still there, as that entire complex stands empty now.

  3. #13

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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    Thanks to court records from Dean A. Lyon suing Bausch and Lomb, Eastman Kodak, and Wollensak Optical for infringement of his lens coating patent, we have an interesting and fairly detailed account of the development of U.S. lens coatings in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.

    The 1956 Rochester Times Union clipping below provides a short overview and you can read the B&L case ruling with many historical tidbits here: https://casetext.com/case/lyon-v-bausch-lomb-optical-co
    The patent, applied for in 1942 and issued in 1946, is available here: https://patentimages.storage.googlea.../US2398382.pdf

    Of note in the ruling, “The military services, and particularly the Navy, were particularly anxious to find a practical way of coating binoculars, periscopes and other ‘light-transmitting’ glass surfaces, which should make the film at once tenacious and viable. . . The trouble had been that all the earlier coatings, though their proper composition was known, could be readily scratched or even rubbed off. “

    Once a viable hard coating process was available, it quickly became a specification for defense products, at least among U.S. manufacturers. For example, below is Wollensak’s 1943 drawing for a 6x30 prism binocular optical assembly; you can see the 3/6/1944 note referring to the new coating requirement. In 1946 Wollensak began offering hard coating on their commercial products for an additional charge, and in 1947 coating became standard for Wollensak.

    Mark, I enjoyed the anecdote about the coating machine irreversibly shoehorned into a courtyard at Hawk-Eye. At Wollensak a coating facility was added onto the roof of the plant at 850 Hudson Ave. I imagine that every manufacturer had to find or make space in a hurry for this transformative process.

    Click image for larger version. 

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  4. #14

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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    Quote Originally Posted by Whir-Click View Post
    Thanks to court records from Dean A. Lyon suing Bausch and Lomb, Eastman Kodak, and Wollensak Optical for infringement of his lens coating patent, we have an interesting and fairly detailed account of the development of U.S. lens coatings in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.

    The 1956 Rochester Times Union clipping below provides a short overview and you can read the B&L case ruling with many historical tidbits here: https://casetext.com/case/lyon-v-bausch-lomb-optical-co
    The patent, applied for in 1942 and issued in 1946, is available here: https://patentimages.storage.googlea.../US2398382.pdf

    Of note in the ruling, “The military services, and particularly the Navy, were particularly anxious to find a practical way of coating binoculars, periscopes and other ‘light-transmitting’ glass surfaces, which should make the film at once tenacious and viable. . . The trouble had been that all the earlier coatings, though their proper composition was known, could be readily scratched or even rubbed off. “

    Once a viable hard coating process was available, it quickly became a specification for defense products, at least among U.S. manufacturers. For example, below is Wollensak’s 1943 drawing for a 6x30 prism binocular optical assembly; you can see the 3/6/1944 note referring to the new coating requirement. In 1946 Wollensak began offering hard coating on their commercial products for an additional charge, and in 1947 coating became standard for Wollensak.

    Mark, I enjoyed the anecdote about the coating machine irreversibly shoehorned into a courtyard at Hawk-Eye. At Wollensak a coating facility was added onto the roof of the plant at 850 Hudson Ave. I imagine that every manufacturer had to find or make space in a hurry for this transformative process.

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	B964372B-878B-449B-BE7E-8BC12D9E207E.jpg 
Views:	22 
Size:	66.0 KB 
ID:	232334
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	29B735FE-C370-4C8F-9EA4-AA8E2026EB1D.jpg 
Views:	23 
Size:	58.4 KB 
ID:	232335
    Thank you very much for this historically important information!

    David

  5. #15

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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    After some searching I found this text in an other group:

    "In 1938, Eastman Kodak Company successfully developed its "HECTA" lens coating process, first used on military objectives during WWII"

    Does anybody knows more about this "HECTA" coating Process?

    I couldn't find anything more.

  6. #16
    Tin Can's Avatar
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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    I have a Chicago B&J catalog, I think 1962

    They offered nearly anything photographic and custom

    Full portable DR, giant lenses, machines

    I spent 2 entire days examining it
    Tin Can

  7. #17

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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    Quote Originally Posted by Tin Can View Post
    I have a Chicago B&J catalog, I think 1962

    They offered nearly anything photographic and custom

    Full portable DR, giant lenses, machines

    I spent 2 entire days examining it

    It was crazy what was on offer back then. Many catalogs can be found online, but it is much nicer to leaf through them....

  8. #18

    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    I was invited by Midwest Photo Exchange (they bought the -entire- B&J inventory) along with Ron Wisner (they flew him in) to prevue hundreds and hundreds of boxes, of the entire thing in their basement. Also they supplied good beer and good pizza, what a hoot it was. I bought an uber rare Kern f6.8 Tessar process lens 300mm. A gem to me. Wisner made a -huge- pile of brass stuff to send home. My friend who is a Linhof collector was also with us. What a goldmine
    Last edited by Daniel Unkefer; 9-Nov-2022 at 06:56.
    Flikr Photos Here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/18134483@N04/

    “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
    ― Mark Twain

  9. #19

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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    B&J Lens Bank.. Still have a few odd barrel lenses from B&J lens bank like a B&J coated f3.5 Heilar in barrel.. Still a copy a vintage Lens Bank catalog.
    MPEX was once LF view camera "central" they bought out studios and more then offered the "gear" at remarkable values..

    Still have many items used to this day that came from MPEX from that era.. Heh, once purchased over 500 rolls of past date 35mm Fujichrome film, absolute bargain per roll.
    Took about two years to burn all that.. still have the mounted slides to this day.

    Very different place and era in foto time,
    Benrice

  10. #20
    Nodda Duma's Avatar
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    Re: Eastman Ektar 14 inch: serial number and coating

    Single-layer coatings in the visible spectrum all use Magnesium Flouride. The low index of refraction of MgF2 is what provides the benefit in reduced reflections at the air-glass interface. Magnesium Flouride itself is relatively hard. “Hard” or “soft” coatings refer to adhesion properties of the coating (and to some extent the porosity of the coating)…that is, how well the material adheres to the substrate. This is a function of the coating process used. The early lower-temperature evaporative/thermal deposition processes were very “soft”. More modern methods - electron beam deposition, ion beam deposition, magnetron sputtering, etc, provide for better adhesion and better coating density and thus would be considered “hard” coatings, more resistant to scratches and wear.

    Multi-layer coatings require layer thickness control systems which were not possible until the 1970s… so anything prior to that, regardless of the process name or trademark name applied by the marketing departments, were all very similar process single-layer MgF2 and, knowing the industry, very likely used many of the same coating machines across the different companies.
    Newly made large format dry plates available! Look:
    https://www.pictoriographica.com

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