TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

While the term “anastigmat” may have come from the optical lab and was intended to denote a reliable form of scientific design, the idea took on its own life in the streets and the markets. Anastigmat came to function as a shorthand for the role that lenses played in photography and cinema: it was a general promise that the lens could accurately express reality without distortion. As Zeiss – and, by association, Krauss – was no longer as distinct on the basis of manufacturing their glass and lenses according to scientific principles, these construction principles were no longer enough to differentiate E. Krauss’ distortionless lenses among the many other lower quality lenses on the market.

In the 1880s and 1890s, these lower quality lenses were frequently of French origin. As Collin N. Bennett, author of the British standard technical manual The Handbook of Kinematography, noted in a 1915 The Moving Picture World article on “High Grade Lenses:”

Anastigmats have sometimes in the past been given a bad name because the word was used loosely to describe more or less cheap French goods which were not truly anastigmatically at all. Unfortunately the French, although excellent allies, have not always in the past proved themselves as careful photographic lens makers as one could wish.^[6]

While Bennett over-emphasized the quality British goods in his article, suggesting that readers interpret these assessments with a grain of national skepticism, other sources do confirm that French lenses were frequently sold under dubious labels of quality.

It is unlikely that the lack of a maker name was a nationally coordinated attempt to subvert the international market. The exclusion of a maker’s name was often a tendency of custom. Microscope objective makers and distributors suggested the importance of including maker names on objectives as early as 1889, noting that the European custom was generally to omit placing a makers name on a lens and that “French objectives quite often reach [the United States] without name.”^[7] Nonetheless, the lack of maker name came to signal dubious quality on the international optical market.

International Licensing and Standardization

In 1900, at the same time that Zeiss was rebranding its Anastigmats under the name of Protar, the Commission of the International Congress of Photography held a conference that set out a series of decisions for the numbering of lenses, diaphragms, and kits. As lenses became an important part of a growing commercial industry for photography and cinema, engraving began to shift from a guarantor of lens quality and began to include standardized technical information. One of the committees – which included Academy of Sciences president Alfred Cornu, Louis Lumière, and representatives from Gaumont, Parra-Mantois, and E. Krauss, among others – provided a report on proposed standardization initiatives for lenses. Among the proposed statues, the Commission suggested that opticians engrave the name of the maker, the place of fabrication, and the name of the objective type.^[8] The reason being for this was that lens makers did not necessarily have to include this information on their lenses – and frequently did not.

Zeiss licensed patents and formulas to a select number of international firms in addition to manufacturing their own lenses. As Hartmut Thiele writes, licensing helped to offset Zeiss’ risks of investing too heavily in the material production of photographic lenses. While Zeiss promoted its expansion into photographic lenses as the continued application of science to different areas of technical development, Thiele suggests that the plant was established in 1888 due to the decline of Zeiss’ microscope business.^[9] In comparison to its practice of not patenting innovations to microscopes and inventions that supported scientific interest or the advancement of research, in the 1890s Zeiss regularly patented instruments “used for ordinary practical purposes, and the innovation has been partly prompted by a desire to protect fine technical work from cheap competition.”^[10] Naming and branding a lens as a “Zeiss” lens was a part of Zeiss’ business strategy, which sought to use its investment in photographic applications to help support its broader interests in scientific research and development. Rather than significantly expanding domestic production, licensing allowed Zeiss to capitalize on the reputation of its brand with little material investment (risk) in lens production itself.