Zeiss and Leitz after WWII

[Xmas]

According to the document linked in message #82, the Allied bombings did not entirely destroy the Dresden factory. What remained of the production lines was transported to the Soviet Union.

Parts, some cameras, and even new production facilities were rebuilt by the Germans in the Jena factory. Missing the original measures they basically, if I get it right, "copied" (reverse engineered) their own cameras. They built three new production facilities which were sent to the SU.

So the Germans were actually building Contax cameras in 1946, some of them already branded "Kiev" (or Volga for some earlier copies).

Maybe but the production numbers manufactured in '47 that I have seen were very small, which lends me to favor, a complete reverse engineer...

And some if the information about bomb damage more extreme.
e.g.

http://www.zeisshistorica.org/nerwin.html

Goodness knows what the truth is.

Noel

[Diapositivo]

Yes this second text is not clear.

It says that the plant in Dresden was 80% destroyed: the building, or the machinery? (The machinery might have been removed as a precaution against bombings, maybe the Germans either knew, or inferred from aerial activity, that a bombing was going to come).

It later says: "He took vital material via by American military trucks to replace the full plant taken as war reparations by the Russian military". Not very clear but it does state that the Russian did get a "full plant" as war reparation. Not clear whether this was from the Berlin plant or the Dresden plant, but from the precedent and the subsequent periods one might infer the author means the Russian took the Berlin machinery. They probably took all they could take, from Berlin and what could be salvaged from Dresden.

[benjiboy]

The Russians took the plant and machinery from Zeiss Jena to Russia but failed to take an important component, the glass., the workers and their family s were given a few hours to pack and were given the option of going or been left there dead.

[Xmas]

The Russians took the plant and machinery from Zeiss Jena to Russia but failed to take an important component, the glass., the workers and their family s were given a few hours to pack and were given the option of going or been left there dead.

The alternate story is that the Zeiss camera works tools were in the basement wth the fire safe and scrap have decended to basement when the floors collapsed, the fire safe was not sufficient to protect the design document from the fire...

They had to redraw the engineering drawngs for each piece part and orgainse three production lines, prototype one of the lines in Dresdern and train the Ukrainian workers in Dresden and Kiev...

The German workers then had to find other cameras to make, not competative with the Kiec (Contax II).

It is normal for a camera company to buy in glass from a glass supplier.

Noel

[benjiboy]

Here's the correct story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_AG

[Monito]

Here are four citations referenced by benjiboy with respect to the topic at hand:

http://www.contaxcameras.co.uk/history.asp
http://www.zeiss.com/C125716F004E0776/0/F56B48BBB022F101C1257175006782D2/$File/Innovation_11_35.pdf
http://ebookee.org/Jewish-Forced-Lab...4_1120580.html
http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledg...e_locale=en_GB