CONTAX 1 has the longest ranging baseline (100mm), and the longitudinal focal plane shutter is composed of 1 1 sheet metal. The shutter speed can be set by the dial, and the maximum shutter speed is 11000s. At that time, Leica was a screw camera, which should be Leica1model, and the maximum shutter speed was 1/500. It can be seen that the technology of Kontha X was far ahead of Leica at that time, and it was already the first ranging viewfinder in the world when it arrived in Kontha X, with a shutter speed as high as11250 s, before Leica introduced ranging. Conta XIII arrived with a built-in exposure meter, nearly 20 years earlier than Leica M5 with built-in metering. Then the inventor of the SLR camera was CONTAX, which was basically IKON's world at that time. At that time, Leica was only a low-end camera, and the high-end camera was only CONTAX, which was completely ahead of Leica in technology.
Later, it was World War II. Zeiss is so awesome that he still manages the army. He produced sights for cannons, tanks and planes for the German army, and all civilian products were suspended. At that time, Leica was not qualified to produce armament materials, but escaped. On the contrary, it won orders from the German army for mass production of ordinary cameras. This stage is the stage when Leica turned losses into profits, and it also created the legend of Leica cameras in World War II, because Zeiss' inventory had been sold out at that time, and the factory was requisitioned by the army and could not be produced. Then Germany was defeated. Lucky for Leica, the factory is in the allied occupied area, and Zeiss is very sad. All of Zeiss's property is in the Soviet-occupied area. Although the Americans tried their best, the Soviets almost hollowed out Zeiss, which led to the existence of two brands, East Zeiss and West Zeiss. This change is equivalent to Zeiss being carved up alive, including technology, equipment, patents and a large number of engineers. That's not the most important thing. The most important thing is that almost all the patents and technologies accumulated by Zeiss were taken away by the Soviet Union. For the Soviet Union, capitalist patents and technologies did not need to be protected, which led to the outflow of many top secret technologies of Zeiss and directly cut off the lifeline of Zeiss. At present, many brands of lens optical design were invented by Zeiss, and were directly made public by the Soviets as technologies not protected by patents. Now, we see that many of Leica's classic lenses are still patented designs pioneered by Zeiss. When Zeiss finally recovered, the photographic equipment in the world was basically labeled as Leica. After that, Zeiss kept trying to catch up and was unable to return to heaven. Later, as we all know, Zeiss directly cut off the product line of civil photography, focusing only on industrial, aerospace, scientific and film optical equipment. The advantage of Zeiss lies in optics rather than specific product manufacturing. For example, Zeiss's best zero-expansion glass can achieve zero expansion in the high and low temperature environment of space, which is an excellent material for manufacturing space telescopes and space shuttle lenses, which Leica does not have. Zeiss is also a company protected by the German Acquisition Act, belonging to the national strategic resources, and foreign acquisitions are not allowed, while Leica is constantly being sold and was once acquired by Hermes.
The essence of this story is that in the camera class, Zeiss hit the ground with a Leica, then was taken away by the teacher, and then transferred to the optics class. In the camera market, Zeiss lost not to Leica, but to fate.