It is often quite interesting to find out about the circumstances that lead to the discovery or development of certain items. The Leica is no exception in this respect.
Many are familiar with the development of the Ur-Leica, the prototype that Oskar Barnack began to work on starting in 1913. Much has been written about his love for photography and that early on he was looking for a more portable camera.
We know that this led to his attempt to modify a 5x7 camera by dividing the glass plate to take a number of smaller, individual negatives. But the negative material at the time did not render images of a sufficient quality to enable even modest enlargements.
The circumstances that lead to the development of the Ur-Leica actually began with someone else. Please note that this is not an attempt to discredit Oskar Barnack in any respect, but an account how a variety of circumstances led to the Leica as we know it.
This began with a colleague of Oskar Barnack, Emil Mechau. Both worked for Zeiss, in Jena in the early 1900s. Emil Mechau was born in 1882 and started working for Zeiss in 1900. In 1903 he was promoted to work on special optical projects in his laboratory at Zeiss. It was there that he overheard a conversation by his superiors about how the annoying flicker of projected movie pictures might be eliminated by means of an oscillating mirror. He decided to research the subject in depth.
However, Zeiss was not particularly interested in this project and did not afford Mechau to spend much time on it. That resulted in his decision to leave Zeiss and to begin working for Ernst Leitz GmbH in Wetzlar in 1910. They were much more open to his idea and soon he was able to show an improved version of the projector.
Shortly after Mechau began working at Leitz, the company needed a master machinist in the microscope research department. He informed Oskar Barnack about the position but he was hesitant and his reply very much illustrates his character. Though he seemed dissatisfied with his work I Jena and being interested in the Wetzlar position, he answered, “Surely it is not desirable for a company to hire a young employee who still has to familiarize himself with the new tasks and whose health compels him to take a leave of absence of one or two months every year, not to mention the fact that the cost of such cures would be too high for me as a private person.”
The answer impressed Ernst Leitz and with Mechau’s negotiations a deal was struck and he decided to hire him in spite of his disclaimers. His assurances prevailed and on January 1, 1911, Barnack arrived in Wetzlar.
The Mechau projector soon found worldwide interest. That resulted in Leitz having Mechau establish an independent motion picture plant in Rastatt, a town near to the Black Forest.
As a master machinist, one of Barnacks first tasks was to design diamond lathes for the lens polishing department. Soon he started work on an all-aluminum motion picture camera, a radical departure from the heavy wooden models of the time. It would become the first all metal motion picture camera ever. This venture into motion picture cameras resulted from the company's need for films to test Mechau’s projectors.
Barnack himself made a number of movies with his new device and samples of his work still exist. Members of the LHSA (Leica Historical Society of America) had the pleasure to view several of these movies during their annual meeting in Minneapolis in 1980. Barnack displayed considerable skill as a motion picture camera man and for a while seriously thought of changing careers again.
One of the problems of shooting movie film at the time was determining proper exposure. Photoelectric meters were not yet available and the camera operator always ran the risk of losing the whole 200 foot roll to improper lens settings. Barnack decided to build a small exposure testing device that would use short sections of movie stock. With it he would expose film by the common method of the time - take a good guess – and expose his movie identically. Afterwards, the test exposures were processed and any exposure problems were compensated for by evaluating the test and adjusting the development of the movie film accordingly.
Barnack’s “light meter” was equipped with a Zeiss Kino Tessar lens and had a fixed exposure time of 1/40 second, the common motion picture shutter speed. The quality of the results surprised him; in the motion picture film he had finally found a fine enough grain structure to yield good enlargements and he recalled his old idea of making a small negative camera. He decided to give the problem a good try and, in 1913, he began to work on his first real still camera.
To get the most from the small 35 mm film he chose to double the size of the standard motion picture frame; in so doing he created the modern 35 mm still camera format (or full frame format). The camera had a focal plane shutter with a fixed slit width of 40 mm. Shutter speeds were controlled by variable spring tension. The first lens was the same Zeiss Kino Tessar he had used in the exposure testing camera, but it proved to have unsatisfactory coverage for Barnack’s full frame format. The next lens tried was a 64 mm Leitz Macro Summar, but it too was unable to satisfy Barnack’s requirements. It was Max Berek, Leitz’ chief lens designer who finally solved the problem. The challenge was to design a lens equal to or better than the best the market could then offer. He designed the Leitz 50 mm f/3.5 Anastigmat, later renamed the Elmax. It was the five element forerunner of the world famous Elmar.
Thus the first Leica camera came into existence. Many improvements were to come later, but most of the features of the production cameras were already present in that unnamed experimental camera.
The influence of Emil Mechau, though unintended, on the development of the Ur-Leica cannot be denied. It serves as an example how life’s twist and turns can result in inventions far from imaginable at the time.
The first production model of the Leica was shown at the Leipzig Spring fair in 1925 and Emil Mechau was able to witness the success of that little camera whose existence was to quite a measure influenced by him.
While the motion picture projector was Mechau’s crowning achievement, it was far from the only one.
The development of sound motion picture films required substantial financial investments, something Leitz considered too much removed from their core businesses and they decided to sell the projector plant in Rastatt to AEG in Berlin, including all of its patents. That also included optical sound devices which Mechau had developed. These created the sound via a light beam, a system which found widespread use in later years. Another of Mechau’s achievements was the development of a 180 line spinning disc scanner, a further development of the Nipkow perforated disc. This was specifically designed for the newly developing television. It was first shown at the 1934 Berlin Radio Exhibition.
In 1935 Mechau left AEG and began working for Telefunken to continue his work in the new field of television. There he developed a flying spot TV scanner for which he received the Grand Prix in the Innovations and Development category in 1937 at the Paris World Fair.
The flying spot TV scanner was instrumental in the development of television, but it also resulted in the television telephone service which, for the first time, enabled a telephone caller not only to hear but also to see the other person on the line. It was the forerunner of today’s video conferencing.
Another television first, developed by Mechau, was a television camera with interchangeable lenses. It became famous for a 1600mm f/5 Leitz lens. For the first time this allowed television transmission from great distances.
Unfortunately, his life ended much too soon. Just a few weeks after the end of the war, Emil Mechau, at the age of 63, was accidentally killed when he was asked by a Russian soldier to defuse a hand grenade. This tragic mishap ended the life of this modest man and brilliant inventor.
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