Tamron
Tamron is a Japanese optical company. It was founded in 1950 as Taisei Kōgaku Kiki Seisakusho (泰成光学機器製作所) by Arai Takeyuki (新井健之), and was incorporated as Taisei Kōgaku Kōgyō K.K. (泰成光学工業㈱) in 1952.[1] The company was initially based in Urawa (浦和市) (today part of Saitama City), but it moved to a new plant in Hasunuma, Ōmiya (大宮市蓮沼) (today also part of Saitama City).[1]
The main optical designer was Tamura Uhyōe (田村右兵衛), from whose name was derived the Tamron brand, registered in 1961. It was only in 1970 that the company took the name K.K. Tamron (㈱タムロン).[2]
Interchangeable Lens Mounts
The company started making cameara lenses in 1957 and with their first lens, a 135mm f/4.5 (model #280), they introduced the T mount. According to the company, the "T" stands for Taisei.[3]. It is often erroneously speculated that the "T" stands for Tamron, but Taisei did not change their name to Tamron until many years after the mount was introduced. The T mount is a 42mmx0.75 thread screw mount. This mount was later modified by another company (ref needed) into the modern T-2 mount. The T mount and T-2 mount are identical except that the T-2 mount adapter consisted of two concentric rings. The inner ring of a T-2 mount can be loosened and rotated so that the lens markings are correctly oriented with respect to the top of camera. Th T mount was adopted by many other companies and is still in use today.
The T mount does not provide automatic diaphragm preselection, and was superseded in 1966 by the Taisei Adapt-A-Matic system, allowing the transmission of the automatic diaphragm for various SLR cameras. Taisei filed two patents on the 1966 Adapt-A-Matic system that are important in the history of interchangeable lens mounts.[4][5]
The Adapt-A-Matic system was subsequently replaced by the Tamron Adaptall system in 1976.[6] In 1979, the company introduced the Tamron Adaptall-2 system, an evolution of the Adaptall, and released the first SP (Super Performance) lenses.[7]
Acquisition of Bronica
Tamron took shares of the Bronica company in 1995 and fully absorbed it in 1998.[8] The last Bronica products were discontinued in 2005 but Tamron is still (2007) active as a lens maker.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 See this official history page (1950s).
- ↑ See these official history pages: 1950s and 1970s.
- ↑ History of Tamron
- ↑ U.S. Patent 3,500,735
- ↑ U.S. Patent 3,657,988
- ↑ Tamron History, 1960-1969, 1970-1979
- ↑ Date of the Adaptall-2: Tamron history at Adaptall-2.com. Date of the SP lenses: this official history page (1970s).
- ↑ See this official history page (1990s).
Links
In English:
- History page of the official website (also in Japanese)
- History page of the US official website
- Adaptall-2.com, a comprehensive website about Tamron manual-focus lenses, including a Tamron history page
In Japanese:
