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Lot Essay
Condition: 3B
Cosmetic: Light signs of wear.
Mechanical: Good condition, minimal marks to camera body.
Rotoloni (1998) describes two of the earliest known Nikon M cameras in the reference cited above: the camera offered here and number M609789 (Stejdir collection, Europe) and notes the existence of 609835 and 609860.
BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
Tsurayuki Yagi was a Vice President of Nippon Kogaku serving the company as Director of the development division in the postwar years. He served Nippon Kogaku for forty-one years.
During the post-1946 period the company was required by the American occupation forces to adjust from being an armaments producer employing 28,000 people in twenty factories into a smaller, single factory organisation making consumer products. Camera production was a logical area to develop and Mr Yagi was responsible for creating a team which designed the postwar Nikon cameras. Mr Yagi was decorated by the Japanese government as Kun Yontou in 1969 for his work with Nikon.
This camera was one of three early Nikon model prototypes which remained in the possession of Mr Yagi at the time of his death in 1978. The family offered to return all three cameras to Nikon but the company preferred to make the gesture of officially re-presenting two of them to the family at his company funeral. The majority of other company prototypes had been destroyed by the company to avoid taxation and for commercial secuirty reasons, although the company does retain examples of some early prototypes.
At Mr Yagi's company funeral , Mr Iyanaga, President of Nikon, made the formal presentation to the deceased's wife and son with one of each of the prototypes as mementos of the 'Father of Nikon'. The cameras were serviced by Nikon before the presentation. One example was retained by the Nikon company and one example was offered at Christie's South Kensington in Cameras and Optical Toys, 25 July 1996, lot 174. This example was offered in Cameras and Optical Toys, 28 August 1997, lot 210.
THE CAMERA AND LENS
This example is clearly a very early example of the Nikon M with a contemporary lens. Published information given by Rotoloni (p.60) indicates a date of formal manufacture for the camera of October 1949. The lens dates from either May 1950 or soon after, when Nikon introduced the lens from serial number 5005001. This example features the larger, heavy engraving associated with the earlier f/1.5 Nikkor. Rotoloni illustrates Nikon M camera 609857 which he describes as 'one of the earliest examples of this model' and number 609860.
POSTSCRIPT
The discovery of Mr Yagi's business card (not included) from c.1933 amongst his possessions throws an interesting light on the early (pre-1939) Japanese optical industry - and Mr Yagi's role in the advancement of optical science in Japan. His son records that both the cards were printed about 1933, giving Mr (T) Yagi's position as 'attache to the Japanese Navy in Berlin'. This arose because Nihon Kogaku Kogyo (NKK, later Nikon), part of the large Mitubishi conglomerate had placed a huge order with the German optics maker Carl Zeiss. At that time Japan was incapable of producing the optics needed for large military applications, so that the head of the Japanese Navy sent Mr Yagi to Germany, ostensibly to liaise with the manufacturer, but also to learn as much as he could from the European organisation, and to reduce the huge gap between the two nations in the field of optical science.
The Berlin card represents a two and a half year stay in Germany, during which time Mr Yagi worked to absorb as much information as he could. On his return to Japan he was placed in charge of the Nikon development team. Success was immediate - they produced the huge range-finding equipment for the battleships Musashi and Yamato which even Zeiss had been unable to produce. At that time Nihon Kogaku Kogyo was the leading optical company in Japan employing 27,000 people, while Canon had only thirty employees and had to order its lenses from them.
Around 1940 the Iwanami publishing company issued the most respected scientific publication of the period, the Rikagaku Jiten, an encyclopaedia containing articles by the foremost Japanese scholars. Mr Yagi contributed all the optical science content.
During the Second World war the large industrial conglomerates had enjoyed huge prominenence, but with dismantling these Mr Yagi, now promoted to the Nihon Kogaku Kogyo board, had to undertake the task of reducing the workforce of 27,000 to 2,000. To Mr Yagi's great satisfaction many of these excellent people became key players in the emergence of Canon, Olympus and Minolta - the world's leading camera manufacturers.
With his remaining staff, he was determined to make the best cameras in the world, and he created a design and development team which struggled in pursuit of excellence, designing and producing prototypes, shooting rolls of film which he took to his own darkroom to process, discussing the results with the team the nest day. Success came when the Life magazine photographers Duncan and Mydance used the early Nikon cameras and immediately spotted the superiority of the lenses in the harsh conditions of the Korean war. Thanks to thorough testing in extreme conditions by the Nikon development team, the Nikon was the only camera whose shutter functioned reliably at the low temperatures encountered.
Cosmetic: Light signs of wear.
Mechanical: Good condition, minimal marks to camera body.
Rotoloni (1998) describes two of the earliest known Nikon M cameras in the reference cited above: the camera offered here and number M609789 (Stejdir collection, Europe) and notes the existence of 609835 and 609860.
BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
Tsurayuki Yagi was a Vice President of Nippon Kogaku serving the company as Director of the development division in the postwar years. He served Nippon Kogaku for forty-one years.
During the post-1946 period the company was required by the American occupation forces to adjust from being an armaments producer employing 28,000 people in twenty factories into a smaller, single factory organisation making consumer products. Camera production was a logical area to develop and Mr Yagi was responsible for creating a team which designed the postwar Nikon cameras. Mr Yagi was decorated by the Japanese government as Kun Yontou in 1969 for his work with Nikon.
This camera was one of three early Nikon model prototypes which remained in the possession of Mr Yagi at the time of his death in 1978. The family offered to return all three cameras to Nikon but the company preferred to make the gesture of officially re-presenting two of them to the family at his company funeral. The majority of other company prototypes had been destroyed by the company to avoid taxation and for commercial secuirty reasons, although the company does retain examples of some early prototypes.
At Mr Yagi's company funeral , Mr Iyanaga, President of Nikon, made the formal presentation to the deceased's wife and son with one of each of the prototypes as mementos of the 'Father of Nikon'. The cameras were serviced by Nikon before the presentation. One example was retained by the Nikon company and one example was offered at Christie's South Kensington in Cameras and Optical Toys, 25 July 1996, lot 174. This example was offered in Cameras and Optical Toys, 28 August 1997, lot 210.
THE CAMERA AND LENS
This example is clearly a very early example of the Nikon M with a contemporary lens. Published information given by Rotoloni (p.60) indicates a date of formal manufacture for the camera of October 1949. The lens dates from either May 1950 or soon after, when Nikon introduced the lens from serial number 5005001. This example features the larger, heavy engraving associated with the earlier f/1.5 Nikkor. Rotoloni illustrates Nikon M camera 609857 which he describes as 'one of the earliest examples of this model' and number 609860.
POSTSCRIPT
The discovery of Mr Yagi's business card (not included) from c.1933 amongst his possessions throws an interesting light on the early (pre-1939) Japanese optical industry - and Mr Yagi's role in the advancement of optical science in Japan. His son records that both the cards were printed about 1933, giving Mr (T) Yagi's position as 'attache to the Japanese Navy in Berlin'. This arose because Nihon Kogaku Kogyo (NKK, later Nikon), part of the large Mitubishi conglomerate had placed a huge order with the German optics maker Carl Zeiss. At that time Japan was incapable of producing the optics needed for large military applications, so that the head of the Japanese Navy sent Mr Yagi to Germany, ostensibly to liaise with the manufacturer, but also to learn as much as he could from the European organisation, and to reduce the huge gap between the two nations in the field of optical science.
The Berlin card represents a two and a half year stay in Germany, during which time Mr Yagi worked to absorb as much information as he could. On his return to Japan he was placed in charge of the Nikon development team. Success was immediate - they produced the huge range-finding equipment for the battleships Musashi and Yamato which even Zeiss had been unable to produce. At that time Nihon Kogaku Kogyo was the leading optical company in Japan employing 27,000 people, while Canon had only thirty employees and had to order its lenses from them.
Around 1940 the Iwanami publishing company issued the most respected scientific publication of the period, the Rikagaku Jiten, an encyclopaedia containing articles by the foremost Japanese scholars. Mr Yagi contributed all the optical science content.
During the Second World war the large industrial conglomerates had enjoyed huge prominenence, but with dismantling these Mr Yagi, now promoted to the Nihon Kogaku Kogyo board, had to undertake the task of reducing the workforce of 27,000 to 2,000. To Mr Yagi's great satisfaction many of these excellent people became key players in the emergence of Canon, Olympus and Minolta - the world's leading camera manufacturers.
With his remaining staff, he was determined to make the best cameras in the world, and he created a design and development team which struggled in pursuit of excellence, designing and producing prototypes, shooting rolls of film which he took to his own darkroom to process, discussing the results with the team the nest day. Success came when the Life magazine photographers Duncan and Mydance used the early Nikon cameras and immediately spotted the superiority of the lenses in the harsh conditions of the Korean war. Thanks to thorough testing in extreme conditions by the Nikon development team, the Nikon was the only camera whose shutter functioned reliably at the low temperatures encountered.