LEICA INCREASED COMPUTER SPEED AND ACCURACY

By Heinz Richter

It is a known fact that Leica was one of the first camera and lens manufacturers that used computers to speed up the design of lenses and, by doing so, greatly increased accuracy. We also know that often Leica designed their own manufacturing and testing equipment or they modified commercially available equipment of meet their needs and their standards.

A much lesser known fact is that this even extended to computers. Not that Leica got involved in computer design, but they greatly increased the operational speed of early computers.

In the late 19th century, Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a medium that could then be read by a machine, developing punched card data processing technology for the 1890 U.S. census. His tabulating machines read and summarized data stored on punched cards and they began use for government and commercial data processing.

Typical Hillerith card

A deck of ounch cards comprising a computer program

This system was initially used for data entry on early computers as well. It worked well, but was very slow. Each card represented only a fraction of the information needed. Subsequently a stack of cards needed to be prepared and then inserted into a reader to extract the information.

Creating punch cards in 1950

Hollerith electronic tabulator

The early computers used by Leica operated in the same manner. It was obvious that an increased operational speed would be an immense improvement.

The initial answer came in form of a paper strip on a roll. Instead of using individual punch cards, the roll of paper eliminated the need to go from one card to another. This greatly increased the operational speed.

But the individual paper rolls proved to be a lot more delicate. To hold a sufficient amount of information, the paper needed to be relatively thin. That made it vulnerable to tearing or otherwise disintegrating, leading to false or even loss of information.

Leica's solution came in form of a long roll of film. It too carried the necessary information in form of punched holes. But the film material was substantially tougher and therefore much less susceptible to tearing. In addition, the perforation of the film made transport through the machines a lot more accurate.

This system served Leica well until it was replaced with magnetic tape for information storage.