ad in an American trade journal for the original Leica camera
Toronto. In the 1920s after losing the great war (WW1), Germany suffered a massive bout of inflation and depression. The Ernst Leitz optical house in Wetzlar had mainly made microscopes, objectives, eye pieces, accessories, and the occasional other optical item – like a field camera and rangefinders.
The decision forced on the tiny family business by the crushing inflation of the 1920s was whether to lay off staff or expand its product line. Ernst Leitz himself decided to manufacture Oskar Barnack‘s camera to keep his staff occupied. The tiny camera was christened the “Leica” or LEItz CAmera.
Marketing began in the mid 1920s. The original Leica had a fixed 5cm lens, miniature focal plane shutter, viewfinder, and a separate rangefinder. The camera was all metal with a sturdy gutta percha coating on the body. It used movie film to make the 24mm x 36mm (1″ x 1.5″) negatives and introduced the idea of a small negative enlarged to make a big print.
A few years later, the entire world crashed into a nearly decade long deep depression. By the mid 1930s, the minicam craze was a world-wide phenomenon and the Leica proved to be very successful for Leitz (minicams caught the mighty Zeiss-Ikon group by surprise and seeing the success of the Leica, it reacted with the Contax line of cameras and lenses).
Note. The title of this post is a riff on Aldous Huxley‘s 1932 book titled, “Brave New World“.
