Fuck me. Some of those lenses are worth more than cars! I'm looking at Zeiss's Wikipedia Page and I see that they make lenses for a ton of other stuff than just photography. It doesn't say why or how they started branching out though. I wonder if they were deliberately trying to diversify or if companies started coming to them because they knew that Zeiss knew how to make good lenses. Similarly, I wonder if the government approached Land, or if Land came to them and said "Hey, want some help?" As for using old lenses, it's nice to see that device manufacturers maintained backwards compatibility. I could swear though, that people like using old lenses, but maybe if it's not for the scratchiness and the fog, maybe it's the older lenses aren't manufactured as well, so the images come out a little bit warped? I dunno. I'll have to look into what I'm thinking of, and when I do, I'll share it on here and tag you. Cold War wise, what I would really love is to read a book on how it affected our pop culture, from video games to movies to comic books. That actually might be a bit of a tall order though, I know, because historians don't seem to pay much mind to pop culture for some reason. So, if you have a book that focuses on the key people of the Cold War and how their actions influenced history, that'd be pretty nifty. Going back to Land, he's a great example of how one person potentially had such a huge impact. That's just something that's amazing to think about.
People came to Zeiss because Zeiss made optics. Those optics were good. They have a reputation on the high end because they've earned it; a shitty Sony pocketcam may not take the best pictures but it's not because the optics suck. Granted, you'll get more effect out of a Zeiss prime the size of your arm than you will a single-element lens the size of an Advil but they still make good glass. People like using old lenses 'cuz they're CHEEP. There's nothing about a lens that gets worse with age, assuming they're well-kept. Glass is glass. Newer lenses are generally better but older lenses work pretty damn well, so long as you don't need all the ultrasonic motors and computer control. This is why the backwards compatibility matters - in this day and age, Moore's Law is likely to make your camera body better every 18 months, but the glass is the glass. This is why once you shoot Nikon you're likely to keep shooting Nikon - you have hella more in glass than you do in the body. There's no useful effect out of old glass other than vignetting, and that just means the lens is poorly matched to the body. So... Cold War. The problem is, you're looking for a set of anecdotes, and while I could give you several about everything, I don't want to write a book for you. It's not that historians pay no mind, it's that it's difficult to come up with a cultural perspective that really says anything. You also have to keep in mind that you're asking for an overview of 40 years of history and that's a tall order. Tony Judt has you covered but it's a slog. You finish that fucker on Audible and they give you a badge. No lie. Lemme give you one you might find more interesting. It isn't particularly about the Cold War, but it might be right up your alley.
Huh. I never knew that about lenses. So, I guess you could say, that cameras themselves lose considerable value over time (barring certain circumstances) but lenses, if well taken care of, are a sound investment. With that in mind, back to repairing my wife's busted cameras, not that we would put the money into them, but I wonder if repairing the. Would increase their value substantially if they were made operable again with new lenses . . . As an aside, I should look into Zeiss's stock history. Not that I'm an investor or anything, but I wonder if there's a correlation between their diverse target markets and the overall health of the company. Both those books look really good. The Amazon description for Postwar make it sound very compelling, but one hell of a chore. You're dead on about The Ten Cent Plague though. Same with A-Z Photography. I think I'm gonna call my bookstore tomorrow and see about ordering them. If I can and I get my hands on them, I'll try to start a thread about them. I think I'd love to discuss both.