Every aspect of the history of the Leica has been written about in great detail and there is no shortage of published information readily available.  This article takes a different approach.  In studying serial numbers and counting screw heads, the broader questions of why anyone should care about the history of the Leica can be ignored.  This article tries to ask, and even suggests answers for, some of those questions.

Leitz occasionally claimed in its advertising, in years gone by, that the Leica was the first 35mm still camera, much to the indignation of photographic historians and collectors.  Although this claim is not literally true (there were a number of earlier 35mm still cameras, such as the Tourist Multiple and the Simplex), it is in a sense justified.  Most of the earlier cameras used relatively long film loads, and in other aspects of their design betrayed their cinematic heritage.  As a design, the first Leica owed almost nothing to these predecessors.  In contrast, almost every subsequent 35mm camera has owed something to the Leica.

With few exceptions, the thousands of 35mm camera designs since then have adopted an arrangement in which the film is wound from left to right horizontally across the film plane with a right-hand knob or lever and, when fully exposed, is rewound from right to left into a cassette with a knob or crank at the left-hand side of the camera (motorizing these tasks has not changed their basic nature).  This convention (which is by no means the only possible one) was established by the Leica.  Until the recent adoption of controls on 35mm cameras which not only operate electronically, but also look like those on electronic equipment, the control layout of most 35mm focal-plane-shutter cameras resembled that of the Leica I.  A round dial on which to set the shutter speed sat on the top plate to the right of centre and, to its right but to the left of the wind knob or lever, was the shutter release.  In most cases, this external arrangement (which again constituted a convention, not a law of nature) reflected the mechanical ancestry of all horizontally-running focal-plane shutters in 35mm cameras, which originated in the shutter of the first Leica.

Furthermore, no previous 35mm camera had been particularly successful in the marketplace.  The Leica established this camera type as one to be taken seriously.  The success of the Leica encouraged the development of better 35mm emulsions designed specifically for use in still cameras, as well as stimulating other manufacturers to introduce competing cameras.  Had the Leica not appeared when it did, it is doubtful that the style of candid reportage using 35mm equipment which became common in the 1930s would have developed.

Leitz began in 1869 as a manufacturer of microscopes.  It is possible that Leitz would never have become a manufacturer of cameras for general photographic use, had it not been for Oscar Barnack.  The Leica began as his personal project, and remained such for a dozen years.  Barnack worked for Leitz as an engineer, having come to the firm from Zeiss.  He began experimenting with the idea of a small camera which would use 35mm cine film, building the first experimental model around 1912.  This project had the initial motive of creating a still camera taking short lengths of film which would function as an exposure meter for a cine camera (at the time, Barnack was also working on the design of a cine camera, which Leitz never manufactured commercially).  However, Barnack also had a personal reason to pursue the project.  A sufferer from asthma, he found it difficult to pursue his hobby of photography with the fairly heavy glass-plate equipment which was in common use at the time.

The "Ur-Leica" and the other prototypes which Barnack built had the basic shape of the Leica I as it was introduced commercially in 1925.  During its long gestation period, the experimental prototypes of the Leica were used by Barnack as his personal snapshot cameras and many of his efforts with them, which are of surprisingly good quality, have been preserved and reproduced in Leica literature.  It sometimes seems as if nothing was ever thrown out at Leitz; two of Barnack's prototype cameras still survive.  For those who wish to experience exactly what it was like to photograph with one of Barnack's prototypes, in recent years Leica thoughtfully produced a limited edition of a fully functional replica of one of the prototype cameras.  Historical accuracy is slightly compromised by its coated lens.

Barnack's experimental camera was equipped with a key feature, a cloth focal-plane shutter.  It is not immediately obvious why the Leica I, which had a permanently fixed lens, should have had a focal-plane shutter rather than a proprietary leaf shutter in the lens.  While Barnack may even then have contemplated the possibility of a future camera with interchangeable lenses, it seems likely that he adopted the focal-plane shutter primarily in order to facilitate experimenting on his prototype camera with various cine lenses and other lenses not mounted in shutters.  To the extent the camera was originally intended for making exposure tests on cine film, it made sense to use on it the lens from the cine camera in which the film would ultimately be shot.  The shutter design also facilitated combined film wind and shutter cocking, incorporated into the prototype from the start (and novel at that date).  This feature precluded double and blank exposures, a common problem for amateurs particularly.

Focal-plane shutters were by no means unknown at the time, but they had not generally been used in such a small camera and Barnack had to solve problems of shutter bounce and acceleration.  The shutter on his experimental models was not a self-capping design (that is, the slit in the shutter curtain remained open at all times and the lens had to be capped while the film was transported, to avoid fogging it).  As was common in earlier designs of focal-plane shutters, in Barnack's prototypes the speed was regulated by variable spring tension as well as by adjustments in the slit width.  By the time the Leica I was introduced, it had acquired its familiar self-capping shutter with speeds from 1/20 to 1/500 of a second, determined solely by variable slit width.  Barnack had devised ingenious solutions to the problems of ensuring even exposure across the entire frame.  That his shutter design was a complete success is shown not only by its longevity in later Leicas and other cameras modelled on the Leica, but also by the fact that, even today, it is rare to find a Leica I in which the shutter is not more or less in working order.

The other key feature of the Leica I, apart from Barnack's design for the shutter and body, was its lens.  The designer of what was to become the 5cm f3.5 Elmar, and many other lenses for the Leica which followed it, was the Leitz optical engineer Max Berek.  The lens which he designed was a variant of the basic Tessar type, which had been around for several decades previously.  Although the design of a lens based on a well-known existing formula may not seem much of an achievement, the design of any complex lens in the days before electronic computers was a daunting undertaking, particularly when the lens was to be used for an unusually small film format where the resulting photographs would require considerable enlargement.  In 1925, an f3.5 lens was considered fast and for it to perform well wide-open was also considered noteworthy.  It was again the Leica which established 50mm as the "normal" focal length for the 35mm format, as it has remained ever since.  Berek's efforts were successful, as evidenced by the fact that the lens he designed remained in production substantially unchanged, except for the addition of lens coating, until late in the 1950s and was widely regarded, at least by Leitz partisans, as superior to equivalent Zeiss Tessars.

On the first production cameras the lens was named simply "Leitz Anastigmat" and had five elements, rather than the four which are characteristic of the design.  After fewer than 200 Anastigmats had been produced, the lens was renamed "Elmax", a name presumably formed from the initials of Ernst Leitz and Max Berek's first name.  After this name had appeared on around 1000 lenses, it was replaced by the name "Elmar", which the lens retained ever after.  By the time Leitz had settled on its permanent name, less than a year after the Leica's introduction, the lens had also reached its ultimate four-element configuration.  Either an Anastigmat or, to a lesser extent, an Elmax, is now a valuable rarity.

One of Barnack's original ideals for his camera was compactness and light weight.  This goal, which in the subsequent evolution of the 35mm camera has frequently been lost sight of and then re-embraced as fashions change, was fully achieved in the first production Leica.  The collapsible lens ensured that the camera was readily pocketable and the use of aluminium for the main body shell made it light.  From the first, Leitz emphasized in its promotion of the camera that these characteristics particularly suited it for activities such as exploration, mountain climbing or aviation, where weight and bulk were to be avoided, as well as for casual snapshooting.  However, unlike some more recent pocket cameras, the Leica was not so small that its controls were finicky or inconveniently located, nor so light that it could not be held steady.

The Leica I (which actually had no model designation until the Leica II was introduced several years later) was placed on the market by Leitz with some trepidation, since it was both Leitz's first venture into manufacturing cameras for general photographic use and a novel design.  However, the camera quickly proved a success.  The name "Leica", formed from the words "Leitz Camera", was used from the start to promote the camera and appeared on such items as the lens cap and case, but was not actually engraved on the top plate until the introduction of the Leica II.  The demand for the first Leica was no doubt greater than Leitz had anticipated.  For the first few years of the Leica's existence, Leitz was probably fully occupied with increasing production capacity to meet demand, as well as designing and manufacturing accessories to accompany the camera, such as rangefinders, filters, close-up lenses, enlargers, printing equipment and copying equipment.

For reasons which have never been fully explained, Leitz made available a variant of the camera with a Compur leaf shutter, which provided a range of slow speeds from 1 to 1/10th second missing from the basic Leica, but did so at the expense of the combined film winding and shutter cocking of the focal-plane-shutter camera.  This leaf-shutter model, because there was almost no demand for it, is extremely rare and hence a prize for collectors, but is of no significance in the technical evolution of the Leica.

Leitz made the Leica available later in the 1920s with the f2.5 Hektor, also designed by Berek.  The standard Elmar was far more popular than this expensive and only slightly faster optic.  According to legend, "Hektor" (a trade name Leitz would later use on many other lenses) was the name of Max Berek's dog.  The f2.5 Hektor has often been considered one of Leitz's optical dogs.  However, the design of wide-aperture lenses in the pre-coating era was not easy, since any increase in the number of elements and hence of air-to-glass surfaces also increased light scattering and would soon result in unacceptable levels of flare.  Thus, a design like the Hektor represented a deliberate choice of maximizing contrast rather than definition.  Some Elmars were fitted with a longer helicoid permitting focusing to 18 inches.  The rarest variant of the Leica I was the gold-plated Luxus, the inspiration for the orgy of gold cameras, by Leitz and others, that appeared in later years.  So few were made that today counterfeit Luxuses undoubtedly outnumber real ones.

The next truly significant development in the evolution of the Leica was the introduction in 1930 of interchangeable lenses in the familiar screw-thread mount.  It was obvious that the design of the Leica was inherently suited to this feature, because of its built-in focal-plane shutter.  In fact, during the 1920s Leicas had occasionally been unofficially converted to take other lenses.  The novelty at the time of supplying a small camera with interchangeable lenses is shown by the fact that interchangeable lenses were initially sold by Leitz only as a custom-matched set with a particular camera body.  The lenses, which were available in 3.5cm and 13.5cm focal lengths as well as the standard 5cm, bore the last few digits of the serial number of the camera body to which they were matched and, since the lens mount to film plane distance in the camera bodies was not standardized, there would be no assurance that the lenses would focus precisely accurately if they were fitted to another camera body.

Leitz quickly realized the absurdity of this approach and, in less than a year, had standardized the flange to film distance in the cameras.  Not many non-standardized cameras and lenses were made, and they are now almost impossible to find in their original form, since many were later upgraded by Leitz to standardized specifications.  From then on, every Leica lens would fit and operate properly on every Leica body (upon the final disappearance of the screw-mount Leicas in the early 1960s, Leitz ensured that screw mount lenses would not become obsolescent, by providing adapters to permit their use on bayonet-mount M cameras, without affecting their rangefinder coupling).  The continued popularity of the 35mm and 135mm focal lengths as the basic wide angle and telephoto lenses for a 35mm outfit (until the present predominance of zoom lenses) reflects not some magical appeal of these numbers, but Leitz's choice of these focal lengths almost sixty years ago, which influenced every later manufacturer.

From the beginning, Leicas had been supplied with a separate rangefinder, which could be mounted in the camera's accessory shoe.  The user measured the distance of the subject with the rangefinder and transferred this distance to the focusing mount of the lens.  When there was no time for it, this somewhat inconvenient procedure could be dispensed with.  Except at very close range, the lens could be guess-focused with a reasonable assurance that there would be sufficient depth of field to render the subject acceptably sharp.  For photographers used to much longer focal lengths to cover larger film formats, 5cm was a very short focal length, giving the photographer unaccustomed latitude for error.  However, with the introduction of a 13.5cm long-focus lens, focusing by guess became a risky proposition.

The next technical development of the Leica, which followed upon the introduction of interchangeable lenses in less than two years, was therefore almost inevitable, the inclusion in the camera of a built-in rangefinder which would couple automatically with each lens that was placed on the camera and make the determination of distance and focusing the lens a single operation.  Again, this was not a totally new idea, but it was executed so elegantly in the Leica II of 1932 that basic elements of the rangefinder coupling system devised by Barnack remain in the M Leicas of the present day.  As one would expect from this designer, the compactness of the camera was maintained, the rangefinder housing extending no higher than the existing wind and rewind knobs of the camera design.  The roller on a pivoted arm which contacted the rear of the helicoid focusing mount of the lens and translated its position into the motion of the rangefinder mirror was a simple and effective arrangement.  Although the base length of the rangefinder was short, the system was made with such precision that its focusing accuracy was more than adequate and could accommodate the later addition of faster lenses to the Leica system.

With the introduction of the model II, the screw-mount Leica camera had acquired all of its essential features and the basic shape which it would retain until its demise thirty years later.  Although subsequent models were to add numerous technical refinements, the basic operation and configuration of the camera would remain the same, a testimony to the soundness of Barnack's design.

The design of the screw-mount Leica was essentially simple and modular.  Although the camera was manufactured and finished with a high degree of precision, one of the reasons for its reliability was its lack of complexity.  Because of the nature of its design, it was possible to convert one model into another, a service which Leitz offered until well into the post-war period and which was quite popular.  This service reflected Leitz's unusual commitment to non-obsolescence.  Although only certain model conversions were offered in catalogues and other Leitz promotional materials, it would appear that Leitz was willing to carry out other conversions on a custom basis.  Furthermore, many independent repair shops were capable of carrying out comparable conversions.  The extent of this updating and conversion appears to be without parallel in the history of camera manufacturing.  In fact, there are far fewer of the early Leica models extant in their original form than their production figures would indicate, not only because of those which have worn out or been lost or accidentally destroyed through the years, but also because of the number which were modified in some respect or completely converted into later models, bearing only their original serial number as an indication that they were ever a different camera.  Some cameras could have been converted more than once, as Leitz introduced further improvements.  The same applies to lenses, to a lesser degree.  It is now difficult to find lenses which are not rangefinder-coupled, much less lenses which are non-standardized, since so many lenses predating these improvements were later upgraded by Leitz.

Conversions are easy to detect only because of the extremely straightforward sequential method of serial numbering which has been adopted by Leitz from the beginning.  Virtually all other camera manufacturers have adopted serial numbering systems which, although no doubt intelligible to them, often make little sense to outsiders.  In contrast, Leitz essentially began serial numbering its cameras at the beginning and has continued in sequence ever since.  On the fixed-lens Leica I, the lenses were not serial-numbered.  On a Leica I which has been converted into a later model, one may find an Elmar without a serial number, but the original fixed lens has been remounted in a later style of rangefinder-coupled interchangeable mount.  When the standardized interchangeable-lens camera was introduced, Leitz arbitrarily began numbering lenses at somewhere around 80,000 to 90,000, reflecting the approximate number of non-serial-numbered lenses already produced.  Today, "five-digit" lenses, like "four-digit" cameras, are much prized by collectors.  Lens numbering has likewise continued in chronological sequence.

When one sees a curiosity such as an early Leica I which has become a kind of black model IIIa with flash synchronization, one wonders how it could possibly have been more economical to convert the original camera, discarding almost all of its original parts, rather than to buy a new camera of a later model.  It is probable that the answer lies in the fact that the conversion could be characterized as a repair to an existing camera, so that when the converted camera was shipped back to its owner in (for example) England or the United States, it would not be subject to the customs duties and taxes applicable to a new camera, which were substantial throughout much of the period in question.

The development of the Leica through the rest of the 1930s could be said to represent its evolution into a "system camera", as that term is now used.  Much of this development reflects the appearance of the first effective competition to the Leica, with the Zeiss Contax of 1932 and its much improved descendants, the Contax II and III of 1936.  By 1933, only a year after the introduction of the first Leica with a coupled rangefinder, Leitz offered three models (the II had been joined by the III, which for the first time offered slow speeds from 1 to 1/8th second, and the "Standard", an updating of the Leica I), nine interchangeable lenses and hundreds of accessories, including such exotica as a stereo prism attachment.  The lens line included such popular mainstays for many years as the 9cm f4 Elmar and the 13.5cm f4.5 Hektor, as well as less common optics such as the ultra-light 10.5cm f6.3 "Mountain" Elmar and the high-speed 7.3cm f1.9 Hektor.  The latter lens was recommended for use with a short-lived Agfacolor lenticular colour process of the day, which required a wide-aperture lens.  The line also included Leitz's first fast normal lens of the Gauss-type design which later predominated in lenses of this speed, the 5cm f2 Summar.

By 1936, the year of Oscar Barnack's death, the model line had grown to five cameras, Leitz having added the IIIa, with a top speed of 1/1000 second, and the rare Leica 250, which had a 250-exposure film capacity.  The lens line had been extended both at the wide-angle and telephoto ends, including the 2.8cm f6.3 Hektor and the 20cm f4.5 Telyt.  The latter was the first lens made by Leitz to be used on a mirror reflex housing.  One of their most famous exotic optics had also been introduced, the 9cm f2.2 Thambar, which produced variable soft-focus effects.  A clear glass filter with a central silvered spot caused the image to be formed by only the peripheral light rays, so that it was affected by the inherent spherical aberration of the design.  With the spot filter removed and the lens stopped down, it performed like a normal lens of its focal length.  The spot filter caused out-of-focus highlights to have a donut shape, similar to the effect produced by a mirror (catadioptric) lens.

It is impossible even to mention the hundreds of intriguing accessories that were manufactured by Leitz in this period.  One which is of particular importance in foreshadowing the later development of the 35mm camera was the spring-driven Leica-Motor introduced in 1938.  Although wound up by hand rather than driven by batteries, the motor was in other respects similar in operation to a modern power winder.  It replaced the base plate of the camera and advanced the film either in single frames or continuously at approximately 2 frames per second.  Its spring had to be wound up again after 12 frames had been shot.  Leitz also produced electric motors for the Leica 250, primarily for military use during the Second World War.  Although early motors were not much faster than a manual accessory such as the "Leicavit" trigger-wind baseplate, they had obvious uses for remote operation of the camera.  One of the mysteries of Leica history is why Leitz did not build upon this early experience after the Second World War, but rather introduced electric motors for their cameras only after the way had been paved by Nikon and others.

Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Leitz introduced the first major mechanical revision of the Leica body.  Although superficially similar to its predecessors, the Leica IIIc was fundamentally different internally, based upon a single die-cast structure.  The camera was also slightly longer and higher than the previous models.  Perhaps more importantly for the user, Leitz also introduced the 5cm f2 Summitar, a marked improvement on the earlier Summar.  Few of either of these new models were exported, before the outbreak of war largely curtailed the supply of Leitz products outside Germany.  During the war, large quantities of Leitz equipment were manufactured for and used by the German armed forces, particularly the IIIc.  Many IIIcs had a ball-bearing-raced shutter denoted by the letter "K" ("Kugellager") on the shutter curtains and in the serial number.  After the war, Leitz adopted such bearings in its shutters generally.  It is by no means difficult to find equipment from this period with a variety of military markings, much of it having been "liberated" by the victorious Allies at the end of the war.  Leitz lenses for sale to the general public were not generally coated until immediately after the war, but it appears that some lenses (particularly the Summitar) may have been coated during the war, perhaps primarily for military use.  Although Leicas of this period finished in grey paint are often assumed to have been for military use, this is not always the case.  A shortage of chromium (and apparently of black lacquer as well) forced the adoption of substitute finishes.

The war stimulated, in some respects, the influence of the Leica as a camera design.  Because Leitz could no longer export equipment from Germany, various attempts were made to fill the void with Leica imitations produced elsewhere.  Such Leica copies as the English Reid and the American Kardon originated in this manner during the war.  Because of the basic simplicity of its design, the Leica was relatively easy to imitate, although none of the imitations ever achieved the consistently high quality of the original.  In contrast, no attempt was made to copy the Zeiss Contax, which incorporated mechanisms too complex to be readily imitated (post-war East German Contaxes and Russian Kievs do not count in this regard, their makers having had the advantage of appropriating the original pre-war Zeiss Contax dies).

The only Leica copy which could be considered truly fraudulent was also one of the most inept, the counterfeit Leicas produced in Russia in the 1930s by the Fed factory.  However, numerous other Leica copies have been produced over the years which are, apart from the name engraved on the top plate, as indistinguishable from a Leica as their manufacturers could achieve.  The golden age of Leica imitations was unquestionably the 1950s, when the flood of Leica-based cameras from Japan made the Leica the most copied camera in history, before or since, and its screw-thread lens mount the most widely used up to that time.  Japanese Leica imitations ranged from straightforward copies like the Nicca to cameras like the Canon line, which although clearly based upon the Leica, incorporated both some genuine technical differences and significant cosmetic variations from the Leica original.  Even the Nikon rangefinder cameras, although outwardly resembling Contaxes and using the Contax lens mount, bore a closer similarity to the Leica in the internal operation of their rangefinder and shutter mechanisms.

The overwhelming influence of the Leica design persisted throughout the era of the rangefinder camera and dissipated only when Japanese manufacturers turned their energies primarily to single lens reflex designs.  It is worth remembering, however, that the shutter in the Nikon F was identical to the shutter of the Nikon SP rangefinder camera which preceded it, both being ultimately based upon the Leica shutter.  Even more recently, when vertically-operating multi-bladed metal shutters came to dominate the field of 35mm focal-plane-shutter cameras, the shutters in the "professional" models which were supposed to be able to withstand constant operation with high-speed motors continued until quite recently to be of the traditional horizontally-running curtain type pioneered by Leitz, until the race for ever-higher maximum shutter speeds made this type no longer feasible.

The history of Leitz following the Second World War encompasses both its finest achievements in camera and lens design and the gradual waning of its influence on the industry as a whole.  Leitz was lucky enough to be located in what became West Germany and hence, unlike Zeiss, emerged from the war with its facilities relatively intact.  The immediate post-war period was characterized both by severe shortages of materials and labour and by enormous demand for camera equipment.  For several years, merely trying to maintain reasonable production output of the most popular Leica camera models and lenses was a sufficient challenge in itself.  To do so, Leitz used up existing supplies of pre-war parts and adopted some "ersatz" materials, leading to some odd anomalies (and occasionally substandard finish) in products of this period.  Work on new designs did not bear visible fruit until the early 1950s, although the ubiquitous IIIc had in fact been redesigned after the war and differed in subtle respects from the prewar version of the camera and the late 1940s brought a few new products, like the imposing 8.5cm f1.5 Summarex, which had actually been designed during or possibly even before the war.

In 1953 and 1954, Leitz introduced its two most important photographic products of the post-war period, which established for the first time a clear technical superiority over any existing competitors.  These milestones in Leitz history were, of course, the f2 Summicron and the M3.  These more than made up for the advantage which Zeiss had enjoyed over Leitz before the war, both in high-speed lenses, with such optics as the famous f2 and f1.5 Sonnars, and in the greater technical sophistication of the Contax II and III, with their combined range-viewfinders.  Leitz made full use in the Summicron of the new optical glasses resulting from research during and after the war and the freedom conferred by lens coating to exploit "air lenses" between lens elements.  In the M3, Leitz updated every aspect of the Leica, with the notorious exception of the rewind knob (the pleasures of which are now available for a new generation to experience in the revived MP model).  However, the most impressive achievement in the M3 (one which remains "state-of-the-art" to this day) was the life-size viewfinder with its parallax-corrected bright projected framelines for three focal lengths and the large clearly-defined rangefinder image.  Even today, many people consider the M3 the best camera ever made by Leitz, or even the best 35mm camera ever made by anyone, and refuse to believe that Leitz has since surpassed or even equalled the performance of the original Summicron design.  So great has been the prestige of the Summicron name that many people have believed that Leitz lenses bearing that name were better than other Leitz lenses.  In reality, Leitz has adopted a practice in lens nomenclature since the late 1950s of giving lenses of the same maximum aperture or general category the same name even if they are totally dissimilar optical designs.  Thus, every f2 Leitz lens for general photographic use bears the name "Summicron", regardless of its design or its merits relative to other Leitz lenses of the same focal length.

Another post-war development which is of particular interest to Canadians was the establishment in 1952 of the Leitz factory in Midland, Ontario, which has produced both Leica equipment for the general photographic market and numerous items of specialized optical equipment for scientific and military use that are unknown to the general public.  This facility was no doubt intended to give Leitz a foundation in North America which would help to protect it from possible future economic and political upheavals in Europe (which of course never materialized in the way then feared).  Cameras (both screw-mount and M models) were assembled at the Midland factory from its beginning, starting with the red-dial model IIIf.  However, apart from extremely rare exceptions (such as the Leica 72 half-frame model), for many years they could be identified as having been assembled in Midland only from serial number lists or by a minute study of the slightly different styles of engraving serial numbers which seemed to differentiate Midland cameras from Wetzlar cameras.  The production run of the M4 in black chrome finish at Midland was the first significant occasion on which a sufficient part of the manufacture of a camera model was moved to Midland to require that the cameras be marked "made in Canada".  Certain types of lenses were manufactured in Midland all along and marked as such.

The late 1950s and the 1960s probably represent a high point in the history of the Leica, at which the quality of Leitz products both in performance and finish reached a peak in relation to other equipment available at the time.  The availability of new rare-earth glasses and the use of computers in lens design enabled Leitz, during this period, to replace every lens in its range (often more than once) with new designs which were both faster and markedly superior in performance.  It is during this period that Leitz earned its present reputation for outstanding photographic optics.  An historical curiosity is that, because experiments had been done with optical glasses incorporating such elements as thorium, particularly in the earlier years of this period Leitz emphasized that its new lenses were not radioactive.  Leitz equipment also showed an attention to the purely esthetic qualities of design and finish which had not been so apparent previously and which was to become rather uneconomic later.  For example, visible screw heads (which had never bothered Leitz in the pre-war period) were virtually abolished from the IIIg, M and Leicaflex cameras and Leitz perfected its multi-layer silver chrome finish, which only the most vicious and prolonged abuse could wear down to brass.  In my personal view, Leica equipment of this vintage is the most beautiful photographic equipment produced in the twentieth century.  This is not to disparage Leica equipment of the present day, which is clearly still manufactured to standards higher than those which prevail in the industry generally and which, overall, is optically superior to Leitz's past achievements.  However, it is unlikely that the Leica will ever achieve again the pre-eminence which it enjoyed 40 years ago, or that Leica will ever again be able to manufacture equipment with such an uncompromising disregard for production economics.

One can say without exaggeration that the history of the 35mm camera as it has developed in this century would be inconceivable without the Leica and, whatever course it might otherwise have taken, would probably have been very different.  This cannot be said of any other camera.  Inevitably, the course of development of the 35mm camera could not be dictated forever by Leitz, and Leica has now become essentially a conservative rather than innovative manufacturer (except in the field of optics).  However, the fact that the Leica continues to survive, and even to flourish, in the field which it revolutionized almost 80 years ago is almost as remarkable as those original innovations.

The firm has also preserved a continuity in its philosophy and approach which is likewise unique.  Not only is it the sole remaining manufacturer of the interchangeable-lens coupled-rangefinder camera which it was the first to introduce, but it continues to follow (on the whole successfully) the design goals pursued by Oscar Barnack, combining quality of photographic results with simplicity and practicality of use.  In general, although Leica is relatively insensitive to economic constraints in its designs, it has seldom forgotten what is now called "human engineering" or produced products that were astounding in their technical specifications but awkward and uncomfortable to use (unlike its old rival Zeiss).  Leica has never followed, and does not follow now, purely the dictates of marketability in the products which it chooses to manufacture, nor introduced "me too" products merely imitating concepts introduced by other manufacturers.  It has not presented its products as exemplifying a monolithic standard of "the best", but rather emphasized the individual "personalities" of optical designs, their limitations as well as their strengths, in order to best serve the photographer.
 

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In my article "The Leica and the Development of the Modern 35mm Camera", I discuss the longest-lived and best-known 35mm rangefinder "system" camera.  This article looks more broadly at the period during which rangefinder camera designs represented the dominant form of sophisticated 35mm camera and sets the history of the Leica in context, by describing its contemporary rivals.

In order to keep the article a reasonable length, it deals only with what might be regarded as the highest developments of the 35mm rangefinder camera, in the hands of those manufacturers who competed with Leitz in producing not only cameras, but full systems of lenses and accessories capable of exploiting to the full the potential versatility of this camera type.  Accordingly, I will discuss only the Zeiss Contax, the Nikon and Canon.  Although many other interesting and sometimes well-executed 35mm rangefinder cameras having interchangeable lenses were produced by other manufacturers during the relevant period, none of such designs achieved a sufficient degree of success to enable their makers to offer systems of a comparable scope.

With the success in the marketplace of the first Leica of 1925, it was to be expected that Zeiss, which was by far the largest German optical manufacturer and which made cameras of every description, would produce a competitive camera.  In 1932, the first Contax was duly introduced.  Zeiss had approached the challenge with typical thoroughness.  The Contax certainly-could not have been accused of being a copy of the Leica; in fact, it is difficult to imagine a less similar camera of the same basic type.  The following were the main differences:

1. The Leica was small and rounded, with a one-piece main body shell and film loading through the baseplate; the Contax was large and rectangular and had a fully removable back.

2. The Contax introduced the concept, used in all present-day 35mm cameras, of a "channel" formed by two sets of guide rails, through which the film passes at the focal plane; the early Leica simply squeezed the film between the focal plane and the pressure plate.

3. The Leica had a horizontally-running cloth focal-plane shutter; the shutter of the Contax ran vertically and was formed of metal slats (resembling visually the cover of an old roll-top desk).  Like many older focal-plane shutter designs, the Contax shutter determined the speed (1/25 to 1/1000 second in the first model) by a combination of variable spring tension and slit width.  Only the slit width varied in the Leica shutter in order to time the fast speeds, as in all present-day designs for 35mm focal-plane shutter cameras.

4. The wind knob and main shutter dial of the Leica were on the top; both controls were combined in a large knob on the front of the Contax.

5. The lens mount of the Leica was a simple screw thread; the Contax had a complex double bayonet mount, with a focusing mount built into the camera body for normal lenses, operated by a small knurled wheel adjacent to the shutter release, and a larger outer bayonet mount for accessory lenses which had their own focusing helicals.

It has sometimes been speculated that the numerous differences between the Contax design and that of the Leica derived from the need for Zeiss to avoid Leitz patents covering the major mechanical components of the Leica, but it is doubtful if this was a significant factor.  In the Contax, Zeiss adopted several features reminiscent of some of its previous cameras.  The design of the Contax shutter had antecedents in earlier Zeiss focal-plane shutters for larger-format cameras, which likewise traversed the shorter dimension of the film format.  The Contax demonstrated to a high degree what might be regarded as a characteristic Zeiss design trait, the pursuit with dogged persistence and ingenuity of technical solutions which were considered to be superior.  In a few respects, the first Contax took the same approach as the Leica.  For example, its rangefinder was of the standard pivoting-mirror type (although with a longer base than the Leica), presumably because Zeiss had not yet developed any better substitute.

As a practical matter, some of the innovations of the Contax were useful; some were debatable.  It was certainly faster to change lenses with the bayonet mount of the Contax than with the Leica's screw mount.  While the focusing wheel has never found universal favour, since it is difficult to use without getting one's fingers in front of the rangefinder window, it is quite easy to use it solely to release the infinity lock and then focus the lens by rotating its barrel, just as with a Leica.  The removable back of the Contax permitted Zeiss to offer specialized accessories such as groundglass backs which were impossible to provide for the Leica, but Zeiss' argument that the back made cleaning the interior of the camera easier could readily be countered with the point that dirt was less likely to get into the Leica's baseplate in the first place.  The Contax permitted the use of cassette-to-cassette film transport and of spools of film with a protective paper backing similar to conventional roll films, as well as the standard cassette (requiring rewinding) pioneered by the Leica.  However, these alternatives never found widespread favour and rewinding is still with us today.  Zeiss argued that the greater size and weight of the Contax permitted it to be held more steadily during long exposures, but this was obviously a mixed blessing.

Zeiss' claim that its metal shutter was more durable than the rubberized silk fabric of the Leica shutter, especially in extreme climatic conditions, was not readily borne out in actual use.  Much has been made over the years of the intriguing possibility of burning a hole in a cloth shutter by leaving the camera with its lens pointed at the sun, but this is hard to accomplish in the real world.  The Contax shutter offered a 1/1000 top speed, as compared to the 1/500 of the contemporary Leica.  In any event, whatever its theoretical merits, the shutter of the first Contax was unreliable in practice.  I have never encountered one of these cameras in which the shutter was still in proper working order.  Within the first couple of years after the introduction of the Contax, Zeiss added slow speeds, made technical improvements in the shutter, changed the rangefinder to the rotating wedge type used in the Super Ikonta and made other minor alterations.  This tinkering with the design after its introduction, which was not Zeiss' usual practice, probably reflected some uncertainty with a novel camera type and some concern with whether, as first introduced, it would attract buyers from the Leica.

While the first Contax was in some ways a shaky start for a great camera system, the lenses which Zeiss made available for it could not be similarly criticized.  While the Contax could be purchased with the familiar 5cm f3.5 or f2.8 Tessar, perhaps the major factor in the success of the camera was the 5cm f2 and f1.5 Sonnars, the best high-speed lenses of the pre-war era.  The design of the Sonnars, which took three years to complete, was supervised by Bertele, who had designed the famous f2 and f1.8 Ernostar lenses for the Ermanox camera (its manufacturer, Ernemann, had been absorbed by Zeiss).  As lenses were, of course, not yet coated at this time, the only way in which a high-speed lens could be designed with an acceptable level of flare and light scattering was to limit the number of air-glass surfaces and hence the potential internal reflections within the lens.  Accordingly, although the fl.5 Sonnar was a seven-element lens, it had only four internal air-glass surfaces.  In order to increase apparent sharpness, image contrast was maximized.  Although the design was dictated partly by the limitations of uncoated optics, its merits are indicated by the fact that, after the Second World War, the Sonnars were reintroduced virtually unchanged in coated form and were imitated by Nikon with great success, as will be discussed later.  Not until the 1950s did Leitz produce the Summicron designs which were to render the Sonnars obsolete.

Within a few years of the introduction of the Contax, Zeiss had made available for it a formidable array of optics ranging from 2.8cm to 50cm.  The long telephoto lenses which Zeiss offered could hardly be considered convenient when first introduced, since they could be focused only by using a groundglass back on the camera or by removing the camera from the lens (tripod-mounted, of course) and substituting for it a groundglass focusing adapter.  No reflex housing was yet available and the longest focal length which was rangefinder-coupled was an 18cm f6.3 lens.  Despite the deficiencies of the first Contax itself, the wide range of lenses and accessories available for the Contax made it effective competition to the Leica, particularly for scientific, technical or other specialized uses.

In 1936, Zeiss introduced the Contax II and III, the most technically sophisticated cameras of their type to appear during the pre-war period.  In fact, with the time-lag in technical development occasioned by the Second World War, it was to be almost another 20 years before any further advance was to be made in the design of the 35mm rangefinder camera.  Although the Contax II and III retained the lens mount, removable back and basic shutter type of the Contax I, they were entirely new designs which did not resemble the Contax I either mechanically or cosmetically.  As can be seen from Leicas of the same period, in the mid-30s black enamel finish and nickel-plated metal parts went out of fashion and chrome-plated finish was in.  Hence, the Contax I was available only in black, the Contax II and III only in chrome.  Perhaps surprisingly, Zeiss continued to make the Contax I available as a lower-cost alternative to the II and III.

Zeiss had made further efforts to improve the Contax shutter and managed to achieve, in their new models, a reasonable degree of reliability which still fell somewhat short of the standard set by the Leica.  The top speed was now 1/1250 second, although this was little more than a selling point to keep one jump ahead of the Leica, which had caught up with the 1/1000 top speed of the Contax I.  It is normal for the highest speed of a mechanical focal-plane shutter to be slow by 25% or more and the nominal increase in the fastest speed of the Contax shutter would seldom, if ever, have made any practical difference.  All speeds were set on a single non-rotating dial around the wind knob on the top of the camera, greatly simplified from the complex front-mounted knob on the Contax I which required that both a shutter-speed group and the particular speed within that group be selected separately.  In comparison, the Leica had a separate slow-speed dial and the high-speed dial rotated both when the camera was wound and when the shutter was released.  With a Leica, speeds could be set only when the camera was wound and it was possible when wearing gloves to make the shutter misfire by blocking its rotation when it was released.  Both Contax models had a built-in self-timer.  The Contax III incorporated a built-in, but uncoupled, selenium-cell exposure meter, a revolutionary idea in its day.  Otherwise, it was identical to the II.

However, the greatest technical achievement of the Contax II and III was their combined range-viewfinder, a major advance on the separate rangefinder and viewfinder used in all Leicas of this period, the Contax I and many other cameras.  The semi-gilded swing-wedge rangefinder utilized by Zeiss in the Contax II and III, as well as being durable, provided a highly visible orange rangefinder image and a very long rangefinder base enabling great focusing accuracy.  About the only criticism that could possibly be levelled at this system was a subtle point made by Leitz in their literature.  Because of the very long rangefinder base of the Contax, if the lens was significantly out of focus the moving rangefinder image would not be visible at all and one would have to think consciously, rather than instinctively, of the direction in which one should focus.

One of the most famous lenses designed by Zeiss for the Contax was the 18cm f2.8 Olympia Sonnar, so-called because it was first made available for the 1936 Winter Olympics at Garmisch-Partenkirchen.  Although high-speed telephoto lenses of this kind are now considered a fairly routine aspect of 35mm systems, nothing like it had previously been seen when it was introduced by Zeiss.  In fact, Zeiss seems to have been somewhat uncertain precisely how the lens should be used.  It was first introduced with a rifle stock and was mounted directly on the Contax.  Presumably, it became apparent that focusing a lens of this speed and focal length with the camera rangefinder did not yield sufficient accuracy and Zeiss later mounted the lens on a mirror reflex housing called the Flektoskop.  This arrangement seems to have been intended primarily for focusing rather than viewing, since it gave an upside-down image.

In a certain sense, the development of the Contax ended forever with the Second World War.  With its principal camera manufacturing operations in Dresden and lens factories in Jena, Zeiss ended up in the Russian zone after the war.  A new Zeiss was eventually reconstituted in West Germany and it reintroduced the Contax, in the form of the IIa and IIIa models, and most of its lenses, together with some new lens designs.  The Contax IIa and IIIa were curiously conservative, as their model designations suggested.  Although they were totally different internally from their pre-war predecessors and incorporated improvements in simplicity and reliability, Zeiss seems to have deliberately avoided departing too far from the external designs of the II and III.  While more compact than the II and III, the postwar models provided a range-viewfinder image slightly inferior to that of the II and III.  It might be added that West German Zeiss' East German rivals for the right to use the Zeiss name, as well as the makers of the Russian Kiev, did even less to update the designs of the Contax II and III which they copied.  When Leitz introduced the M3 in 1954, Zeiss had either to respond or to let the Contax die a slow death.  It chose to do the latter.  Although prototypes of modernized Contaxes were designed, Zeiss never put them into production.  Zeiss apparently decided to focus its energies elsewhere, on other types of cameras which it considered, with some justification, were likely to be more important in the future.  The story of how Zeiss thereafter had some of the right ideas (such as predicting the coming ascendancy of the single lens reflex camera) but often implemented them in ineffective ways, is another story for another occasion.

Nippon Kogaku, which means simply "Japan Optical", was formed in 1917 as a general optical manufacturer.  By the 1930s, the company was producing photographic lenses under the trade name "Nikkor", including those made for the 35mm Hansa Canon, of which more will be said later.  However, it did not make cameras for general photographic use.

Immediately following the end of the Second World War, under the American occupation of Japan, Nippon Kogaku decided to produce a 35mm camera.  In 1946, the first model was designed and the name "Nikon" chosen for it.  The camera design was a hybrid between the two great pre-war German rangefinder camera designs, the Leica and the Contax.  While the Nikon used the Contax lens mount, had a removable back like the Contax and bore a superficial resemblance to the Contax, it used a conventional pivoting-mirror rangefinder and horizontal cloth focal plane shutter design like the Leica.  While this approach was rationalized by Nippon Kogaku as a choice of what they considered to be the best features of both cameras, this is probably only half-true.  The rangefinder and shutter systems of the Contax were far too complex for a company attempting, amid the devastation of postwar Japan, to commence manufacture on a modest scale of a new camera hitherto unknown to the marketplace.  The basic mechanical systems of the Leica camera had a record of proven reliability and, in addition, were relatively simple to manufacture if skilled craftsmen were available and extensive hand finishing and calibration were no obstacle.  Since early Nikons are usually still in working order when encountered today, this seems to have been a sensible decision.  One Leica feature which Nippon Kogaku must have liked was the external cable-release thread, which they refused to give up until the introduction of the F3.

Curiously enough, Nippon Kogaku did not exploit the apparent opportunity to make their lenses and camera bodies fully compatible with the Contax.  Although the Nikon used the same lens mount as the Contax, the flange-to-film distance in the two cameras was not identical and users could not interchange freely between the two systems.  Perhaps this occurred accidentally, as a result of Nippon Kogaku adopting a slightly different standard for the very small production runs of the first Nikons, when the survival, much less success, of the new camera was still uncertain and compatibility with the Contax would not have been a major concern.  Alternatively, Nippon Kogaku may have wanted the Nikon to be regarded as an independent system in its own right and not merely as parasitic upon the Contax.  In contrast, all the Japanese cameras and lenses which used the Leica screw mount were compatible with Leica lenses and bodies.  Later, during the 1950s, Nikkor lenses were produced in considerable quantities in both Leica screw mount and Contax-compatible mounts and sold both as accessory lenses for owners of other makes of cameras and to other Japanese camera manufacturers to be supplied as original equipment on makes such as the Nicca.

Production of the first Nikon began in 1948.  In features, it was roughly comparable to a Contax II, although it lacked certain refinements like a single non-rotating shutter speed dial and the highest speed was 1/500 second.  It came equipped with a well-made Nikkor copy of the f2 Sonnar.  The camera had one bizarre aspect for which no entirely convincing explanation has ever been given.  Instead of the usual 24mm x 36mm format, it gave a 24mm x 32mm format.  It has been suggested that this was an attempt to create a 35mm "ideal format" more compatible with standard paper sizes and slightly increasing the number of shots per roll.  That this was not merely a temporary aberration on the part of Nippon Kogaku seemed to be shown by the fact that the second model, which appeared in the next year, had a format of 24mm x 34mm, demonstrating a grudging willingness to go halfway towards meeting the standard format.

Up to this point, the Nikon was being produced in extremely small quantities.  As tends to be the case with low-volume, hand-made, semi-experimental cameras, almost no two early Nikons were exactly identical.  The breakthrough for the Nikon came in 1950, when American photographers covering the Korean War acquired Nikon equipment on their way through Japan.  It may be recalled that, at this time, Japanese manufactured goods were not held in high esteem in the West.  The photographers who tried Nikon cameras and Nikkor lenses were surprised to find that they were well-made and well-finished and that the lenses consistently produced results comparable to those of the German optics with which the photographers were familiar.  As a result, the Nikon suddenly acquired a reputation outside Japan and could successfully be exported.  Thus, in 1951 the first really successful Nikon model, later designated the "S", was introduced.  The first three Nikon models, up to and including the S, were essentially the same camera, built-in flash synchronization being the only fundamental improvement which was added during this period.

In 1954, the Nikon S2 was introduced.  With such features as a life-size range-viewfinder, a rapid wind lever and a rapid rewind crank, the S2 was a considerable advance upon the features of the Contax IIa.  Although the S2 must have been designed before the Leica M3 was released in the same year and hence was not a response to it, it kept up with some of the M3's most significant improvements.  More Nikon S2s were ultimately produced than any other model of rangefinder Nikon.  With the S2, the Nikon reluctantly joined the majority and adopted the conventional 24mm x 36mm format.  The North American market for the Nikon was increasingly important and it had been pointed out that Kodak was not about to provide special mounting services for the convenience of Kodachrome-shooting Nikon owners.

The culmination of the Nikon rangefinder cameras, the model SP, was introduced in 1957.  The SP offered a life-size range-viewfinder with automatically parallax-compensated projected frame lines for lenses from 50mm to 135mm, selected by a dial around the rewind crank, together with a built-in separate viewfinder providing frames for 28mm and 35mm lenses, a focal length range not matched until the Leica M4P of 25 years later.  In later SPs, Nikon adopted titanium foil in place of cloth for the shutter curtains.  Probably the feature of the SP which was most influential in the long run was the capability of attaching a compact battery-driven electric motor drive.  This marked the beginning of the trend which has resulted in non-motorized 35mm cameras becoming rarities today.  However, the SP motor was still a custom-fitted accessory which had to be matched to a particular camera body.

In addition to these new features, the SP represented a total mechanical revision of the Nikon camera.  The level of durability and reliability which Nippon Kogaku strove for and achieved in the SP is probably best shown by the fact that the Nikon F single lens reflex, introduced in 1959, which became famous for these qualities, was very closely based on the Nikon SP.  In fact, the shutter and wind mechanisms were fundamentally the same; only the mirror and autodiaphragm mechanisms were, of course, completely new.  The quality of finish was also very high on the Nikon SP.  As with Leitz cameras of the same vintage, it is impossible to contemplate a Nikon SP without twinges of regret for the changes in economics and production methods that have brought us polycarbonate top plates and silkscreened numerals instead of enamelled or chromed brass and engraving.

The Nikon SP was also the last of the Nikon rangefinder cameras.  The models which were introduced later, the S3, the S4 and the rare half-frame S3M (designed to be used with a motor, as its designation indicates), were merely simplified variants of the SP.  The S3 and the S4 were offered as lower-cost alternatives to the SP and were discontinued before the SP.  With the enormous success of the Nikon F and the obvious decline in the popularity of rangefinder cameras, Nippon Kogaku could no longer devote the facilities necessary to keep the SP in production.  In the early 1960s, the last remaining stocks of Nikon rangefinder cameras and lenses were sold and the line was ultimately formally discontinued.  As can be seen, the life of Nikon rangefinder cameras as an evolving design was short and the total production of Nikon rangefinder cameras of all models was less than any one of the more successful Leica models.  In a sense, the Nikon rangefinder camera is the very small base upon which the vast edifice of Nippon Kogaku's subsequent development as one of the pre-eminent manufacturers of 35mm cameras was built.

A large part of the worldwide reputation which Nippon Kogaku earned during the period in which it produced the Nikon rangefinder cameras was based upon Nikkor lenses.  Many of the well-known earlier F Nikkor lenses were remounted or slightly modified versions of lenses already available for the Nikon rangefinder cameras, such as the 10.5cm f2.5.  Ultimately, lenses ranging from 21mm to 1000mm were available for the rangefinder Nikons, growing from a nucleus of four focal lengths ranging from 35mm to 135mm that were offered with the first Nikon.  An unusual feature of the designation on Nikkor lenses until the early 1970s was the use of a letter, representing the number of elements in the lens design expressed in Latin.  Thus, "S" would signify seven elements, "Q" four elements and "H" six elements.  Wide angle lenses, however, all bore the designation "W".  Also, until the late 1950s all Nikkor lenses bore the designation "C", meaning "coated", a somewhat redundant assurance given that no lenses had ever been manufactured for the Nikon which were not coated.  In the early years of the Nikon, Nippon Kogaku was apparently so concerned that its lenses not be mistaken for cheap junk that it mounted them in massive brass barrels with thick chromium plating, resulting in optics which were very heavy in relation to their dimensions.  After the company became more confident, it responded to complaints from photographers and remounted all of its lenses in lightweight black aluminum mounts.

In the early years of designing Nikkor lenses for the Nikon camera, Nippon Kogaku's indebtedness to Zeiss was evident.  The 5cm f2 and f1.4 (and the 13.5cm f4, later f3.5) Nikkors were based upon the corresponding Zeiss Sonnars, but they were carefully designed and manufactured derivatives with a general quality level as good as the Zeiss originals.  It will be recalled that the Sonnars are pre-war designs intended to maximize contrast, in order to offset the inevitable light-scattering in uncoated lens systems.  The post-war coated Sonnars, and the Nikkor derivatives of these designs, thus produced very high contrast.  This characteristic was popular with photojournalists, who were more concerned about producing negatives with "snap" that would result in pictures that would come through strongly in magazine or newspaper reproduction than they were with the highest possible resolution of fine detail.  Thus, although the f2 or f1.4 Nikkor of this period could not compare in ultimate resolution with the Leitz Summicron, that did not matter to many professional users.

Absurd though it may sound, in advertising the f1.4 Nikkor (which replaced a very short-lived f1.5 Nikkor) it was emphasized that it was the only lens available which was faster than f1.5.  In fact, the difference between f1.4 and f1.5 is well within permissible manufacturing tolerances for a lens of either nominal aperture.  Other Japanese manufacturers later played the same game of maximum aperture one-upmanship (including Canon, as will be seen later).  Even in the beginning, however, Nippon Kogaku did not simply follow Zeiss.  The 8.5cm f2 Nikkor was an original design and both it and the rather similar 10.5cm f2.5 Nikkor design were very successful.  In later lens designs, Nippon Kogaku naturally became more independent of older models, producing, as one would expect, both lenses of remarkable quality even by present-day standards, such as the 3.5cm f1.8 Nikkor, and less successful experiments in exotic optics, such as the 5cm fl.l Nikkor, a nine-element design produced for a few years in the late 1950s.

In 1935, Seiki Kogaku ("Precision Optical") designed a prototype of a 35mm rangefinder camera, closely based upon the Leica II.  This was named the "Kwanon".  A year or so later, the company began to produce commercially a somewhat different design, usually engraved (and hence referred to) as a "Hansa Canon", "Hansa" being a distributor's trade name and not Seiki Kogaku's.  This camera, which was exported from Japan to a negligible extent, if at all, was still Leica-based but was less of a pure Leica copy than the Kwanon prototype.  Seiki Kogaku was initially a very small-scale operation and Nippon Kogaku probably had some involvement in various aspects of the design and production of the camera.  It featured interchangeable Nikkor lenses in a unique bayonet mount, the focusing mount being incorporated into the camera body.  Immediately before and during the Second World War, a number of modifications were made in the design, most notably the abandonment of the bayonet mount and the adoption of a non-Leica-compatible screw mount and later a Leica-compatible mount.  All subsequent Canon rangefinder cameras used the Leica screw mount.  So far as is known, only 50mm normal lenses of various maximum apertures were ever produced for the Hansa Canon by Nippon Kogaku.  Immediately before and during the Second World War, Seiki Kogaku also produced a few additional simple rangefinderless Leica-based camera models.  During the Second World War, it began to phase in its own 50mm lenses under the trade name "Serenar".  Canons were made in such limited quantities during this period that cameras of the same model type varied greatly in minor details.

The history of Canon as a major name in 35mm rangefinder cameras does not begin until after the Second World War, during the period of American occupation which also saw the birth of the first Nikon.  In 1946, Seiki Kogaku resumed camera production for civilian purposes and, for the first time, incorporated a combined range-viewfinder into the Canon.  In 1947, the company began producing its own accessory lenses for its cameras (the first being the 135mm f4 Serenar) and adopted "Canon" as its corporate name.

Canon's rangefinder camera production makes that of Nikon, Zeiss or even Leitz look childishly simple by comparison.  According to Canon itself, it produced 28 different models of its interchangeable-lens rangefinder cameras before their final disappearance in the late 1960s.  Others regard there as being up to 40 or more distinct Canon models.  This proliferation is accounted for by the fact that Canon made numerous minor variants of each camera type and treated most of them as separate models.  Also, Canon produced well over five times as many rangefinder cameras as Nikon over the entire period in which it manufactured them.  Fortunately, Canon rangefinder cameras fall into three basic "periods" which are relatively simple to describe.

Canon cameras, like the Nikon, only became known outside Japan from about 1950 onwards.  The first widely popular Canon rangefinder cameras (the II, III and IV series) bore a general resemblance, both in appearance and operation, to an overgrown, angular version of a Leica IIIa.  The idea of parallel series of models may have been inspired by Leica model designations, II-series Canon models being the most basic, with a top shutter speed of 1/500, III-series models having a 1/1000 second speed and IV-series models having flash synchronization.

It would be unfair to regard these cameras as merely Leica copies.  From 1949 on, Canon adopted a distinctive form of combined range-viewfinder with a three-position rotating prism operated by a lever under the rewind knob of the camera.  As well as the usual full-frame but less than life-size image, life-size and 1 1/2 times life-size magnifications of the rangefinder spot and the central portion of the image were available.  While not marked as such, the higher magnification positions could be used as somewhat approximate viewfinders for the 100mm and 135mm focal lengths, although the image produced was closer to round than to rectangular.  The flash synchronization of these models was provided through a grooved rail incorporating a direct cordless contact, located on the end of the camera. 
Canon flash units would slide onto the mounting rail.  This ingenious solution avoided dangling cords, placed the flash in a preferable position to the side of the camera, rather than over the lens, and avoided a top-heavy arrangement potentially straining the camera's top plate.  However, as no other manufacturer adopted it, Canon ultimately decided that it would have to switch to the ubiquitous PC synchronization terminal.

The earlier cameras during this period were supplied with 50mm f3.5 or f2 (later f1.9) Serenars which closely resembled the Leitz Elmar and Summitar, both in design and appearance.  Canon stopped using the Serenar trade name about 1952 and its lenses thereafter simply bore the trade name "Canon".  Later models of this group were generally supplied with a 50mm f1.8 Canon lens.  An f1.5 lens was also available (later replaced by an f1.4).  At this stage, Canon could be said to be influenced generally by Leica lens designs, just as Nippon Kogaku was influenced by Zeiss designs.  Canon's fast normal lenses were good-quality versions of classic Gauss designs comparable to the Leitz Summitar and the Summarit.

A particularly interesting example of design influence from the Leica was the trigger-wind baseplate which Canon supplied as an accessory for its early baseplate-loading cameras.  This rapid winding device was essentially identical in construction to the Leicavit produced by Leitz for screw-mount Leicas during the same period.  However, Canon characteristically added its own improvement to the design, by providing a grip handle which screwed into the tripod socket and helped the photographer to operate the trigger-wind without jerking the camera.  This accessory seems to have been quite popular, probably more so than the Leicavit itself.  Canon was so enamoured with it that in the next redesigned series of cameras, which began to appear in 1956, certain models had built-in winding triggers in the baseplate, the models so equipped being designated by the letter "T", as opposed to "L" for conventional lever-wind.  Again, Canon supplied convenient screw-in handles to help in steadying the camera.  This long-lived idea survived into some of the early Canonflexes, in which the trigger had a swivelling-out action rather than a lateral pulling action.  There is no clear reason, other than the fact that top-mounted rapid-wind levers became conventional, why this idea should have died out.  Many people find baseplate triggers easier to operate at eye level and faster than the usual wind lever, as well as lighter, quieter and more compact than a motor winder.  Leica itself has finally revived the Leicavit for present-day M Leicas, apparently inspired by its recycling of the "MP" model designation for the latest M6 variant.

Canon's second main type of cameras, beginning in 1956, comprised the VT (or L for lever-wind) and VIT/VIL series.  With a larger, flat-topped body and a hinged back, the external resemblance to a screw-mount Leica disappeared.  However, Canon had not yet exhausted the possibilities of its three-position range-viewfinder.  The choices offered were now the more useful ones of a 50mm field, a 35mm field and a high-magnification position.  In the later models of these series, as in subsequent Canon rangefinder cameras, Canon replaced the cloth fabric of its previous shutters with stainless steel foil coated with black epoxy.  If used to any great extent, these shutters usually acquired a crumpled look which did not seem to interfere with their operation.  These models incorporated a unique and clever means of providing automatic parallax correction for accessory finders, through a small stud in the accessory shoe which moved in and out in tandem with the movement of the rangefinder coupling cam.  The stud pushed the spring-loaded finder up or down automatically, instead of the user having to set manually a tiny parallax correction lever on the finder.  1956 also saw the introduction by Canon of its 50mm f1.2 lens.  Many of this large and imposing ultra-speed optic were sold, although Canon's fl.4 lens was a better and more practical choice.

In 1959, Canon introduced the model P.  Although incorporating a full range of difficult-to-see etched frame lines in the viewfinder, the specifications of this model were not markedly more impressive than its immediate predecessors in the VI series.  However, it actually marked a new departure for Canon as a manufacturer.  Although Canon had made considerable numbers of cameras up to that point, it had done so using traditional labour-intensive production methods.  "P" stood for "popular" and, with this model, Canon utilized true mass production techniques for the first time, in order to make "advanced" features available for a lower price to a larger market.  The same year, the first Canon single lens reflex was introduced and, although it may not yet have been clearly apparent, Canon's new effort to become a manufacturer for the mass market would bear fruit in lines such as fixed lens rangefinder cameras, single lens reflexes and 8mm movie cameras, rather than the rangefinder cameras with interchangeable lenses which Canon had so far produced.

Reflecting the diminishing market for the "system" rangefinder camera, the final series of Canon interchangeable lens rangefinder cameras was a sophisticated design intended to compete with the Nikon SP and the Leica.  These models were very successful in terms of sales, probably coming close to matching Leica sales in the comparable years.  The Canon 7 of 1961 and the 7S of 1965 both had a range-viewfinder with automatically parallax-compensated projected frame lines, selected by a knob on the camera top, for focal lengths from 35mm to 135mm.  In an effort to provide features not available from the competition, Canon offered built-in meters, of the selenium cell type in the case of the model 7 and the CdS type in the case of the 7S.  While unexciting by present-day standards, this obviously represented an advance in convenience on the typical accessory meter of the day, which clipped on over the shutter speed dial and had to be removed in order to attach any other accessory, such as a finder for a wide angle lens.  Canon perversely did not exploit this benefit in the model 7, which lacked an accessory shoe, a feature which was provided by an accessory bracket.  This device was attached to the flash synchronization terminal, through a characteristic Canon touch, by a small breech-lock bayonet mount and did not seem sufficiently secure to hold heavy accessories.  Continuing a Canon design tradition, these cameras were considerably larger than a Leica M.

With the Canon 7, Canon introduced its 50mm f0.95 lens, the widest nominal aperture which has ever been made available in a lens for general photographic use and the ultimate culmination of the craze during that era for "available darkness" photography and high-speed lenses.  One might uncharitably regard the Canon f0.95 lens as more a publicity stunt than a useful working tool, given that the speed increase over Canon's own f1.2 lens seemed to consist primarily of extra flare.  The design of a fully practical lens of such an aperture was probably beyond the technical capabilities of any manufacturer at that time.  Not until 20 years later did Leitz design a lens, the fl Noctilux, that combined a true usable fl aperture with good performance stopped down.  The 7 and 7S models had a unique external bayonet, somewhat akin to the breech-lock mount of Canon single lens reflexes, in order to mount both the f0.95 lens, with its massive squared-off rear element, and reflex housings.  This was a very late adaptation of the concept of the Contax-Nikon dual lens mount.

In the latter years of its rangefinder camera system, Canon, like its competitors, made available an extensive range of lenses from 19mm to 800mm, together with a great variety of accessories.  Although Canon did not discontinue its rangefinder line until some years after Nikon, it was obvious with the introduction of Canon's popular and successful single lens reflex designs, like the FX of 1964 and the FT of 1966, that the rangefinder line would disappear, as it ultimately did.

By the mid-1960s, the single lens reflex had become the dominant type of sophisticated interchangeable-lens 35mm camera.  Each of the major manufacturers of interchangeable-lens rangefinder cameras, other than Leitz, either had discontinued their rangefinder lines or would do so in the near future.

It is interesting to speculate as to why interest shifted to the 35mm single lens reflex camera type precisely when it did.  There is, of course, nothing recent about the single lens reflex concept in camera design.  In fact, it is older than the concept of the coupled rangefinder camera.  However, the 35mm camera had developed in the 1920s and 1930s as a fast-operating and convenient camera type and there were obstacles to producing a single lens reflex 35mm design which would have these attributes.  The need to focus the image on a small, dark groundglass screen and stop down the lens before taking a photograph precluded the almost instantaneous response which the rangefinder camera permitted.  No focal length wider than about 40mm could be used for reflex focusing and viewing, due to the thicker body of a 35mm reflex camera necessitated by the swinging mirror.

Having said this, one wonders what the result might have been if Zeiss had applied to the creation of a 35mm single lens reflex design the ingenuity which it expended on the unique 35mm twin-lens reflex Contaflex of 1935.  The only fairly successful 35mm single lens reflex of the 1930s was the Kine Exakta, which was merely a scaled-down version of the VP Exaktas, roll-film reflexes which were not designed to be used quickly and in which the groundglass image was naturally larger and hence easier to view.  It is difficult to believe that no better reflex focusing and viewing system for a 35mm single-lens reflex could be devised at the time than that provided in the Kine Exakta.  In fact, contemporary reflex housings for rangefinder cameras often provided a viewing system with greater magnification and a clearer, more easily focused groundglass image, admittedly at the cost of considerable bulk.  While some post-war technical advances, such as those in optics, definitely did involve materials and methods which did not exist before the war, it is difficult to see that this applies to the collection of relatively small improvements which turned the 35mm single lens reflex into a versatile camera design.  In any event, whatever the causes of the delay in development of the 35mm single lens reflex, it did not occur in a significant way until the 1950s.

The developments which, in combination, finally made the 35mm single lens reflex widely successful were, in order of apparent importance, the provision of an eye-level unreversed erect life-size groundglass image through the use of a prism or (occasionally) a system of mirrors, the automatic diaphraghm and the instant-return mirror.  To this might be added the development by Angenieux in the 1950s of retrofocus wide-angle lens designs, which meant that the superiority of the reflex design for long focal lengths was no longer compensated for by an inability to use short focal lengths except with the reflex mirror locked up.  This is not the place to recount in detail the gradual process by which these improvements were developed and adopted.  However, I cannot resist observing one of those characteristic hesitations which seem to accompany an advance in technology, that indicate a lack of complete confidence in the new solution and a desire to leave an escape route or a concession towards the old ways.  In many 35mm single lens reflexes of the 1950s, a plain built-in optical viewfinder was provided as a supplement to reflex viewing (this can be seen in, among others, the Alpa, which also provided a rangefinder, the Praktina and the Asahiflex).  Although such a viewfinder would not seem to provide an adequate alternative to make up for whatever deficiencies remained in the reflex viewing and focusing systems of these cameras, some residue must have remained of an old feeling that a groundglass was suitable only for focusing and a viewfinder should be provided for viewing.

It may be speculated that the gradual acceptance of the 35mm single lens reflex was a function not only of the technical improvements in such cameras themselves, but also of the increasing acceptance of the 35mm camera as appropriate for general-purpose photography.  In the pre-war period, although the manufacturers of 35mm rangefinder cameras had promoted them as suitable for every form of photographic endeavour, this was not necessarily a widely accepted view.  So long as the 35mm camera was considered uniquely appropriate to reportage and other kinds of photography in which speed of operation was crucial, the advantages of the rangefinder camera type were obvious.  When it became accepted that the 35mm format could appropriately be used for other types of photography where the advantages of reflex cameras were manifest, the link between the 35mm format itself and the rangefinder camera type began to dissolve.

In conclusion, the first few decades of the 35mm camera, in which this format became established as one around which cameras could be designed offering a combination of convenience and rapidity of use with the greatest possible optical and technical versatility, were dominated by the rangefinder camera.  Not only are the variety and sophistication of the designs originating in this era of inherent interest, but this era also includes the formative years of most of today's pre-eminent manufacturers of photographic equipment.  By looking at this era, we can better understand how we have arrived at our position today, as well as coming to appreciate that photographic history, like other history, seldom develops in a straight and rational line.

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