What if...? How often have we contemplated certain
occurrences in the light of what has or hasn't happened?
That certainly is the case
with Leica as well. Most cell phones
these days have evolved to fairly capable cameras as well. As a matter of fact, they have all but wiped
out the market for small, digital point and shoot cameras. Yet many could never imagine that Leica would
be even remotely interested in this market segment.
Yet this is exactly what
has happened. It is a known fact by now
that Leica collaborated with the Chinese cell phone manufacturer Huawei and
developed a camera and lens system for their top level cell phones. Approximately a year prior to that, Panasonic
showed a cell phone of their own which was equipped with a Leica lens.
Panasonic cell phone with Leica lens
Yet there was a connection
between Leica and the telephone much earlier in history. In a book by W. Erb about the Leitz (Leica)
company is a short paragraph with a transcript from a newspapaer article that
translates as follows:
“On September 1864, the 39th meeting of the German
Naturalists and Physicians took place in Giessen. (Giessen is a town very close
to Wetzlar) Particular efforts were made
to remain competitive during the subsequent exhibition of microscopes. For the young mechanic (Ernst Leitz) there
was a special task. Phillip Reis planned
to demonstrate his invention, the telephone, since his first try in Frankfurt
on October 16, 1861, had failed. Ernst
Leitz successfully completed the preliminary work with the help of his
technical knowledge, so that on September 21, 1864, the final recognition was
not denied the inventor.”
Phillip Reis
Reis' Telephone
Ernst Leitz
Photograph by Oskar
Barnack
After reading that short
paragraph one has to wonder: What if Ernst Leitz had become interested in
telephones? Could there have been a
Leitel (Leitz Telephone)? Considering
the fact that Ernst Leitz did not start his work at the Wetzlar Optical
Institute until 1865, this seems to be a possibility.
It is also interesting to
note that Alexander Graham Bell did not show his invention of the telephone
until 1876, twelve years later, yet he is generally credited with the invention
of the telephone. The above account
very much proves that this is not at all the case.
Alexander Graham Bell
Besides Reis and Bell,
many others claimed to have invented the telephone. The result was the
Gray-Bell telephone controversy, one of the United States' longest running
patent interference cases, involving Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, Elisha Gray,
Emil Berliner, Amos Dolbear, J. W. McDonagh, G. B. Richmond, W. L. Voeker, J.
H. Irwin, and Francis Blake Jr. The case started in 1878 and was not finalized
until February 27, 1901. However,
regardless of the claims by Bell and others, nobody demonstrated a working telephone
prior to Phillip Reis.
________________________________________________________________________________________
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