842
presented an improved model and was generally credited
as the inventor of the telephone.
Not yet 30 years old when he took over, Ernst Leitz
(I) revitalized the lagging company by implementing
the series production methods that he had learned in
Switzerland, gradually overcoming the earlier lack of
innovations, the growing competition and the slump
caused by the outbreak of the Franco-German war in
- His new methods enabled him to offer faster de-
livery times that were quite unusual at that time. This
and the participation in nature- and medical congresses
with practical demonstrations brought him into closer
personal contact with personalities from science and
technology from well beyond the nearby universities
of Giessen and Marburg. As a result, Leitz microscopes
and their accessories began to gain favor in the right
circles. It was in 1870 that Leitz published his fi rst
price list under the wordy title Current prices of the
achromatic microscopes of the institute founded by
C. Kellner in Wetzlar, successor Ernst Leitz (formerly
Belthle & Leitz) 1870.
During these years the fi elds of medical histology, pa-
thology, and bacteriology were being rapidly developed
primarily by German scientists with the aid of afford-
able, serviceable German microscopes designed with
these fi elds’ requirements in mind. The production of
Leitz microscopes began to grow vigorously, in spite of
increasing but stimulating competition from Carl Zeiss,
who had begun producing microscopes in 1858 and
who had engaged the services of the brilliant physicist
and mathematician Ernst Abbe. Additional competition
was rendered by Georg Oberhäuser-Hartnack, a German
citizen who had immigrated to Paris, where he produced
microscopes that were cheaper and that performed better
than the Belthle microscopes. Engelbert & Hensoldt also
produced competing microscopes, as did the Wetzlar
brothers Wilhelm and Heinrich Seibert in cooperation
with a man named Gundlach. All of them had worked
with Leitz’s predecessors Kellner and/or Belthle at vari-
ous times before setting out on their own. The statistics
show that microscope production improved dramatically
after Ernst Leitz (I) took over in 1869:
1849–1860 circa 400 microscopes
1861–1870 circa 600 microscopes
1871–1880 circa 2,500 microscopes
1881–1890 13,650 microscopes
The 10,000th microscope was completed in the year
1887.
Ernst Leitz’s (I) older son Ludwig had developed a
compact and inexpensive photomicrographic apparatus
in 1882, which led to the development of three lenses
for general photography marketed by Ernst Leitz (I) in
1886 called Summar, Periplan, and Duplex. The initial
focal lengths were 24, 42, and 64 mm, with a maximal
aperture of f/4.7. The series was later expanded and
pages 608 and 609 of the 12 September 1901 issue of
the London magazine “Photography” published a highly
favorable report on the wide-angle performance of a
Periplan No.5 lens with a focal length of approximately
8 inches (203 mm). The awareness of photography
already existed during the earliest times of the fi rm, as
evidenced in a letter in which Carl Kellner informed his
friend and occasional associate Moritz Hensoldt that he
had built a lens for a Daguerreotype camera. The superb
quality of Leitz lenses for photography was to become
one of the company’s most famous attributes.
Competition triggered strong awareness of the need
for improvements and innovations, and as early as 1877
Ernst Leitz (I) created a scientifi c department dedicated
to research and development in optics. The man placed
in charge was the mathematician Karl Metz, who already
had experience in the computation of lenses for tele-
scopes. The initial task was to improve the company’s
own achromats, building on the pioneering work already
performed elsewhere by Gauss, Helmholtz, and Abbe,
and later applying the possibilities provided by new
types of optical glass supplied by the prominent glass
laboratory of Schott & Genossen that was founded in
1886 in Jena with government support.
The growing demand for Leitz microscopes and
many related instruments led to several expansions of the
manufacturing space that had started in a regular house
in Wetzlar that served as both a family residence and a
factory, followed by several moves to larger facilities
that culminated in a stately group of buildings at the foot
of a hill topped by the Kalsmunt castle, where the Leica
Microsystems Company buildings still stand today. At
one point there were three separate substantial buildings
at this location that housed the mechanical shop, the
carpentry shop, and the optical shop.
Ernst Leitz (I) was a personable individual who main-
tained friendly relations with persons from scientifi c,
industrial and academic circles, and this inspired him
to tailor his products to their respective needs. He also
had a talent for attracting and nurturing the right people
for the jobs. In a signifi cant example, he recognized the
skills of Oskar Barnack and encouraged him to come to
work in Wetzlar, in spite of the fact that Barnack suffered
from severe asthma. Leitz offered him all the time he
needed for trips to health spas and even accompanied
him on some of these trips.
Barnack had worked at Carl Zeiss in Dresden and
Jena from 1902 to 1910, where he had approached
Director Guido Mengel of ICA, a camera-making
subsidiary of Zeiss Ikon, with a prototype of a 35 mm
camera that he had built, but Mengel had rejected it.
At the suggestion of Emil Mechau, who had left Zeiss
earlier to work on motion picture projector design at
Leitz, Barnack eventually, albeit reluctantly (for health