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Wetzlar: Optics City (1 Viewer)

Troubador

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Is there any other city like Wetzlar in the world for its home industry of optics?
It is home to Carl Zeiss, Leica and Minox.

I suppose the Japanese equivalent would have to be Canon, Nikon and Pentax having factories in the same city.

Any takers?

Lee
 
Is there any other city like Wetzlar in the world for its home industry of optics?
It is home to Carl Zeiss, Leica and Minox.

I suppose the Japanese equivalent would have to be Canon, Nikon and Pentax having factories in the same city.

Any takers?

Lee

I'm not sure I understand why the city of Wetzlar is any more or less important than any other city. It's a city with other businesses besides optics. The individual businesses and their reputations are certainly important. But where those companies are physically located really has no benefit that I can think of. The Japanese and Chinese optics companies seem to be doing just fine with dispersed manufacturing facilities.
 
Is there any other city like Wetzlar in the world for its home industry of optics?
It is home to Carl Zeiss, Leica and Minox.

The premise here is that there remains an old-world romance with technological excellence, or something like that. I agree with Roadbike that there is no value in fetishizing a given European city for its optical industry. I would bet that Kunming has more opto-mechanical acreage than Wetzlar and just as strong a local history with this industry.

David
 
Isn't Leica in Solms now, they will be shifting back to Wetzlar in a few years time

Joe you are absolutely right and I am ashamed at my ignorance of such developments in the world of the Red Dot.

Obviously I have had my head shoved too far up my Zeissgeit and I promise to look around at the wider world a bit more in the future.

Humbled

Lee
 
Lee,

you weren't that wrong. Solms is very close to Wetzlar, only a few kilometres away. Many plants and companies of the optical industry, many of them leading on their area, are close to Wetzlar as well. I'm thinking for example of producers of grinding or coating machines, where the names among buyers of binoculars aren't well known. There is a reason for that concentration at a given area. As a specialized company you need well educated employees. At or close to Wetzlar the chance is higher than elsewhere to find people with the needed skills.

Steve
 
Lee,

you weren't that wrong. Solms is very close to Wetzlar, only a few kilometres away. Many plants and companies of the optical industry, many of them leading on their area, are close to Wetzlar as well. I'm thinking for example of producers of grinding or coating machines, where the names among buyers of binoculars aren't well known. There is a reason for that concentration at a given area. As a specialized company you need well educated employees. At or close to Wetzlar the chance is higher than elsewhere to find people with the needed skills.

Steve

Hey, thanks for the input Steve. I can lift my head up again.

Lee
 
I am going from memory now, and that is not a good thing, but back in the 60’s when I first got into optics I seem to remember that Wetzler was the source for the best raw glass making materials of its time, and therefore attracted plants like Zeiss and Leitz.

The only thing I could find now is this quote from Wikipedia:

“In 1869, in the municipal area alone, 100 ore mines were in operation. Wetzlar's first blast furnace, built by the brothers Buderus, went into service in 1872. As well, world-famous optical and precision mechanics companies such as Leitz (Leica), Hensoldt (Zeiss), Pfeiffer Vacuum, Philips, Loh, Seibert, Hollmann, Minox and many others set up shop in the town.”

Maybe some of our German friends know more about this.
 
Both Leitz and Hensoldt began manufacture prismatic binoculars in Wetzlar in the 1890's, and in 1964 Zeiss West Germany moved binocular manufacture from Oberkochen to Wetzlar. Hence, historically Wetzlar is deservedly renown for the manufacture of fine optics.
 
The premise here is that there remains an old-world romance with technological excellence, or something like that. I agree with Roadbike that there is no value in fetishizing a given European city for its optical industry. I would bet that Kunming has more opto-mechanical acreage than Wetzlar and just as strong a local history with this industry.

I'm clearly wrong on this, and I apologize for the tone. It will be interesting to see if Chinese industrial centers like Kunming mature to the same levels as similar Japanese cities did after WWII, let alone a historic manufacturing center like Wetzlar (and I'm not immune to the romantic associations ;)). If I recall, in the post-war period Nikon hired several Leitz engineers to help them develop their optical line.

David
 
I'm clearly wrong on this, and I apologize for the tone. It will be interesting to see if Chinese industrial centers like Kunming mature to the same levels as similar Japanese cities did after WWII, let alone a historic manufacturing center like Wetzlar (and I'm not immune to the romantic associations ;)). If I recall, in the post-war period Nikon hired several Leitz engineers to help them develop their optical line.

David

David

Thanks for your gracious post. For my part, I did come across as a bit of a Wetzlar Worshipper didn't I. That wasn't intended. I wondered what was in the water (or the ground) that started the whole optics industry in and around Wetlzar or whether it was just an accumulation of small happenstances.

There must be an 'optics city' in Japan even if the big two, Canon and Nikon aren't both there.

Lee
 
David

Thanks for your gracious post. For my part, I did come across as a bit of a Wetzlar Worshipper didn't I. That wasn't intended. I wondered what was in the water (or the ground) that started the whole optics industry in and around Wetlzar or whether it was just an accumulation of small happenstances.
Lee

Lee,

an important factor as a starting point for industrial development was the use of hydro power for example as actuator. At that early age of industry oil and other sources of power weren't common in use like in later times. In Wetzlar there is the river Lahn. AFAIK, like other places in Germany and probably in other countries as well, it was the closeness to a streaming river that initializes industrialisation. BTW, it is said that nowhere else in the world lays that amount of optical glass in a river like in the River Lahn because in former times the apprentices for optician used to throw their failed work pieces into the river...

Who knows, now that it's foreseeable that fossil fuels will come to an end, hydro power could come into play again.

After WW I technology transfer started from Germany to Japan. I was surprised (somewhere at Nikon's Website) to read that back in the 1920s German engineers were already invited by Japanese companies. Sadly enough, it was like so many times in the history of optics, the war (WW II) and the military that reinforced further development and cooperation.

Steve
 
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