Info please on Scientific Lens Co Portrait lens

[lenser]

I really appreciate all the replies and am enjoying the somewhat mysterious quality of the info about the owners. Please keep it coming..
Does anyone have any info about the qualities this actual Len
Thanks.

Tim

[c.d.ewen]

FYI: 714 East 166th St in New York is in the Bronx, an "Outer Borough", i.e., not on Manhattan island. I am far from an expert on the state of manufacturing in NYC at the turn of the century, but would hazard a guess that it was centered in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Bronx (in my uneducated opinion) was still transitioning from pastoral to residential at that time. It's quite possible for a manufacturing facility to have existed there, but I would wonder, given Nehring's aversion to overhead, whether or not he operated the business out of his home.

Just speculating - don't take any of this as Internet Gospel. I just happened to have lived in da Bronks half a century ago.

Charley

[Jody_S]

From reading all those ads and notices from 100 years ago, I would say it's not a matter of Nehring's lenses being of inferior quality or of bad design, it's just that he was copying all the Zeiss and Cooke designs he could lay his hands on, and under-selling all the the manufacturers who paid royalties for names and had patent licensing agreements. Besides underselling the originals from Europe, of course. He's quite brazen about it all in his ads, his wording is thinly disguised, if at all. Which means that a Scientific Lens Co lens found today could be an excellent copy of a classic design, a poor copy of an average design, and anything in between.

Patent lawsuits (and patent 'trolling' letters and threats, for that matter) are hardly new to the 21st century. Reports from New York manufacturing circles from 150-100 years ago read almost like court reporting.

[Steven Tribe]

At last, an opportunity has presented itself so that I can post some photos of this very rare Scientific Lens Co. "Ocular" Portrait lens. I have not had it in my hands, so can't give an explanation of the various "extras"!