In a few weeks, on
February 20, the LEICA Barnack Berek Blog will reach its 7th
anniversary. But its origins go back a
lot further, to January 1979, long before the internet and all of its
conveniences.
At the time I was co-owner
of Photo Visuals, the first store ever to sell Leica equipment
exclusively. As a service to our
customers we decided to publish information about Leica on a regular
basis. As a name, we chose “The Barnack
& Berek Newsletter.”
Many people are familiar
with Oskar Barnack as the inventor of the Leica camera back in 1913 and even
though it was far from us to take any credit from him, we felt that rarely any
mention of Professor Max Berek was ever
made. Yet without him the Leica would probably
never have come into existence. He
designed the first lens for the preproduction Leicas and the success of that
little camera played no small part in the decision of Ernst Leitz II to
manufacture it.
Max Berek would have had
little reason to design his lens without the farsightedness and genius of Oskar
Barnack, yet the success of the Leica might never have happened without both of
them.
The Barnack & Berek
Newsletter created a lot of interest, more than we ever envisioned, and it quickly
grew from the initial 8 pages to well over 30.
Initially the newsletter was sent to our customers free of charge, but
the greatly expanded versions began to put a drain on the operating budget and
we asked the recipients if they were willing to pay for it.
To our surprise, most were
willing to do so and subscribed. That led
to the thought that we had outgrown the designation of a newsletter, that a new
name might be in order.
We didn’t want to
eliminate the tribute to Oskar Barnack and Max Berek and after some
deliberation decided on BB - Magazine for Leica Owners. The growth continued and we considered
changing the magazine from black and white to color.
Leica experts like James
Lager, who is known for his many books on Leica and Rolf Fricke, one of the
co-founders of the Leica Historical Society of America among others submitted
articles to the BB Magazine and many readers sent in their photographic work to
be published.
Unfortunately the economic
slowdown of the early 80s made a switch to color impossible.
As a matter of fact, at that point we were barely breaking even with the
black and white version.
To make things worse,
several of our advertisers withdrew their ads for economic reasons and we were
forced to discontinue publishing of the BB Magazine.
I never realized how much
I missed writing many of the articles, but resurrecting the magazine was out of
the question. Enter the internet. At the beginning of 2012 I began to think
that a blog about Leica might be of interest.
Not that this hadn’t done before, but most other Leica oriented blogs are
promoting current Leica equipment or they are dealing with just used equipment
and the history of the Leica.
To offer something of
interest for all that are interested in Leica, this blog will always try to
reach a balance between contemporary and historical items of interest. This has been the case from the very
beginning of the Leica Barnack & Berek Newsletter and the BB Magazine. I decided to use the same format for the
LEICA Barnack Berek Blog. Its growth and
success over the last 7 years seems to prove that decision to be a good one.
For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right
To comment or to read comments please scroll past the ads below.
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Bill Rosauer wrote:
ReplyDeleteHeinz, thanks for your work over the years. I have always been a fan and still have my copies of your newsletter in my archives
Wilbur Norman wrote:
ReplyDeleteLong live the Leica BBB! Many Thanks for your effort and good work.
Thanks gentlemen, it is encouraging to know that my efforts are appreciated.
ReplyDelete