Is the earliest serial number about Zeiss lens I can find?

[pierre506]

Sorry about the bad quality of the pic. It's took by cellphone.



CARL ZEISS JENA Nr. 569



Or, it's fake?

[Steven Tribe]

All the early (around serial no.1000) Zeiss lenses I have had through my fingers have been hand engraved (modernish copperplate) and have been filled with white enamel.
This design does not look 19 century and Zeiss began with standard lacquered brass finish. "number" is abbreviated to No. not Nr.
Perhaps a model number - or from GDR?

[fdchen]

#40 and #82 are in my hand
#20 and many others were shown in eBay many years ago.

[Sevo]

Nr. rather than No. as a abbreviation for number places that lens after 1933 (or at whatever point after that Latin abbreviations in science and engineering were banned). So this will not be a early lens (unless it was re-engraved by a repair man when replacing a worn flange).

It won't be late GDR either - while Zeiss Jena restarted their numbering some time after the late seventies, the (presumably TGL standard font) engravings on any of my late Tessars from that period look very different and more modern.

With that odd mix of typographies I suspect a late wartime product, when production had been relocated to other companies and underground facilities, utilizing whatever tools were at hand. Or it might be from the immediate post-war period, when some laid-off Zeiss employees were assembling lenses at home from parts taken from the shelled out factories, to swap or sell on the black market. In any case, the number will not be a official Zeiss serial - it either is a fragment, or something entirely different.

[pierre506]

I thought that Sevo must be right.
It's not an earlier lens according to the lans shape.

[pierre506]

I found it in this link: http://forum.mflenses.com/carl-zeiss...or-t51333.html

Kollektor=Collector
I don't know the meaning of Ic.
I acquired it because it just is very familiar with Voigtlander All Metal Daguerreotype Camera.
http://historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/li...et&app_id=225&
http://www.geh.org/fm/mees/htmlsrc/m...html#topoftext

[Sevo]

That presumably is part of a microscope or projector, at any rate a segment of the illumination path of a optical instrument (a collector is used to feed lamp light into a condenser). That number may be a part rather than serial number - I have seen other two to four digit part numbers on components of Zeiss microscopes.

Looking it up on mflenses, yup, that is a segment of the illumination path of a optical bench rig (for science, education or production tests) - in the seventies/eighties we still had optical benches with exactly that type of foot in school and university.

[Nathan Potter]

I thought that Sevo must be right.
It's not an earlier lens according to the lans shape.

pierre506, The image on the left shows the lens + diaphragm on an optical bench stand suggesting the application was more modern and supplied by Zeiss as a piece of experimental optics. Any idea about the optical construction?

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[pierre506]

Thank for all replies.
I used to wanna make a small Wet Plate by the gear.
It seems that it will a small decoration on my desk.

[pierre506]

That's the way how to used VOIGTLÄNDER All METAL CAMERA to make daguerreotype.

http://hem.bredband.net/tjmop/voigtlander.htm