Carl Zeiss alliance with Bausch & Lomb
1892 - 1915
In 1892 Bausch & Lomb of Rochester, New York, became the sole American company licensed to make the Zeiss "anastigmats" and other photographic lenses. They also were licensed to make prism binoculars of the Zeiss form. The production of Zeiss products in the U.S. enabled Zeiss to bypass costly import tariffs and establish a bigger business in the U.S.
This agreement between the Carl Zeiss Optische Werkstätte and Bausch & Lomb continued through the Zeiss company's name change to Carl Zeiss Jena in 1904. Instruments made during the period of the licensing agreements are marked with both the Carl Zeiss Jena logo and Bausch & Lomb Optical Company signature.
In 1904, Zeiss wanted to sell gun sights to the US Navy, but found that George N. Saegmuller had cornered that market. According to Saegmuller, "Dr. Czapski, one of the leading men of Zeiss, came to see me....He said 'you are too firm in the saddle and we will give up any effort to get orders from the U.S. Navy Department' and then he surprised me with the proposition to found a firm with Zeiss and myself, I to remain in Washington. I told him that had he come a year earlier that proposition would have been very alluring but that I had agreed to move to Rochester and join the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company. 'This is too bad,' he said, "but is the agreement legally binding?" I told him "No", that no papers had been signed, but that I would not go back on my word. He again said that it was too bad, adding that they were not at all satisfied with Bausch & Lomb; that they had given them the right to make the Zeiss Binoculars and Anastigmats, but that so few were being sold and that they didn't come up to the Zeiss standard. However, he said that he hoped my coming up to Rochester might change the situation for the better."
Saegmuller kept his word to Bausch & Lomb. In 1905 his company merged with Bausch & Lomb and was renamed the Bausch, Lomb, Saegmuller Company. In 1907, the name would be changed back to Bausch & Lomb.
Apparently unable to broker a deal with Saegmuller directly, Zeiss sought to strengthen its position with Bausch & Lomb. Zeiss bought about 33 percent of the Bausch, Lomb, Saegmuller Company. In 1908, a delegation from Zeiss came over to the US and formed another corporate marriage with Bausch & Lomb in which they owned 20 percent of the company. It was then proposed that the two firms-- Bausch & Lomb - Zeiss and Bausch, Lomb, Saegmuller, Zeiss--should be combined into one entity under the name of Bausch & Lomb Optical Company. In January 1908 this corporate alliance was formalized between the companies. It was known as the "Triple Alliance," and the new logo featured three prisms, each with the initials of the participating entities: B-L, Z, and S.
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Wilson's Photographic Magazine (1913) gives a nice summary of the whys and wherefores of the collaboration, as seen in particular from the American side:
"A LEADING pioneer in the movement for the development of the photographic lens was the Bausch and Lomb Optical Company. The activities of this firm had, from the beginning, a very important effect upon the advancement and popularization of photography in America.
"Prior to the early [18]80's most of the photographic lenses used in this country were imported from Europe. But these were high in price, and the problem before these American pioneers was that of attaining the quality of the foreign lenses and of reducing the cost to the photographer. Long study and experiment resulted in the production of photographic lenses of high-grade that merited and gained the American photographers' enthusiastic welcome.
"In the early [18]90's the Carl Zeiss Optical Works, of Jena, entered the photographic field and introduced the anastigmat lens, invented by Drs. Abbe and Rudolph, and patented in this country. Recognizing their position in the industry, and desiring to enter the American market, they made an agreement with the Bausch and Lomb Co. whereby they, as their licensees, began to manufacture and sell these new lenses under their formulae.
"This relationship with the Zeiss Works gradually became strengthened until in January, 1908, a corporate alliance with that company concentrated the resources, the experience and the energies of the two leading optical firms of the Old and New World.
"The practical result of this closer union is that every invention or improvement made either by Zeiss or by the Bausch and Lomb Co. is at once available to the other. The free interchange of ideas and of methods is an advantage to each centre of progress — an advantage amply demonstrated in the successful advance of these initial years."
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World War I put an end to this collaboration. In November 1915, after the war had been declared between Germany and the Allies, but before America entered the war, Zeiss withdrew from the corporate alliance on the grounds that Bausch & Lomb had furnished military instruments to Great Britain, an enemy of Germany. Zeiss returned its stock in the corporation, receiving 4 million marks. This stock was then divided among the various members of Bausch & Lomb, including Saegmuller.
George Nicholas Saegmuller, <i>The Story of My Life</i> (1929); online at <a href="http://www.burnsorama.com/genealogy/gns/autobiography.html" target="_blank">website</a>.
<i>Wilson's Photographic Magazine</i>, 50 (1913): 316.