Hoxton Bridge
Veteran Member
Stated as if it were a matter of fact...
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Why were Brits ???
- Thread starter matthias jurisch
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absquatulate
Guest
The UK manufacturing base is built around specialised components, engines and the like, it doesn't specialise in things it can't compete in like cheap electronic goods, in which China is the leader, it's a high tech industrial base. It doesn't matter who you sell to, the fact is that we makes lots of stuff. London is receiving record levels of Tech investment at the moment. We have companies like JCB and Dyson who are innovators in their field.
The Service industry has been good for us, but manufacturing is coming back in big way, and it will get even better when Brexit is finalised, we will finally be able to compete better globally. Thatcher had her faults but we thrived under her until she was stabbed in the back by people who have since dragged us down, be we will come again, count on it.
But they did...
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www.woodandbrass.co.uk
Consider that the Royal Photographic Society was created in 1853
There were English mass-market cameras as well
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www.cjs-classic-cameras.co.uk
Of course some companies came to dominate through patents -- the first SLRs were made by Graflex in 1898 in the US, the first 35mm SLR was the Exakta 1936 in Germany. Every developed country had industries devoted to optics both for scientific and military purposes. And German patents were confiscated after both world wars.
The world consumer market was at one time dominated by Kodak Ltd based in the UK
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www.bl.uk
In 1907 Kodak had a worldwide workforce of more than 5,000.
You might find this interesting:
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books.google.com
After WW II, the UK used its Marshall Plan funds differently than its European neighbors
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www.bbc.co.uk
Here's some info on how Japan became a major player:
The UK being the oldest 'developed' economy has always been prey for the cheap labor/mass producers it spawned -- first the US, then India and the Commonwealth, then Hong Kong etc. No different from the position the US now finds itself in relative to China, India and SE Asia.
There are still some non-mass marketeers producing fine lenses in the UK, Check out Cooke lenses
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www.cookeoptics.com
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www.cookeoptics.com
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www.cliveruss.com
spoonthegeezer
Leading Member
lets face it, brit autos were garbage fun maybe but garbage nonetheless.
The Japanese were not afraid to make mass produced quality designed to last, we all know how tough and resilient those bodies are. I used my ricoh xr2 for over 20 years and lusted after the likes of the canon ae1 for instance but the images were no better in my opinion.
great topic by the way.
The Japanese were not afraid to make mass produced quality designed to last, we all know how tough and resilient those bodies are. I used my ricoh xr2 for over 20 years and lusted after the likes of the canon ae1 for instance but the images were no better in my opinion.
great topic by the way.
Bali_Mirage
Forum Enthusiast
That's all you need.
I can't give a detailed answer to your question, but precision industries and craftsmanship aren't a large part of our culture. We associate them more with Germany and Switzerland. Our idea of 'smarts' is not taking an innovation and making a product out of it, but thinking of the innovation in the first place.
The legendary unreliability of British products was partly due to this culture. Everything was a prototype, nothing was ever quite ready for production.
The legendary unreliability of British products was partly due to this culture. Everything was a prototype, nothing was ever quite ready for production.
matthias jurisch
Veteran Member
Thanks, you just animated my fondness for the English...I have always been a deep admirer of the Beatles and the Royal Navy...
This is for sure one of the best musical scores out of England...I don`t think this has anything to do with photography, yet this is England at its best
Greetings from Berlin, btw, Britania rules the waves...
This is for sure one of the best musical scores out of England...I don`t think this has anything to do with photography, yet this is England at its best
Greetings from Berlin, btw, Britania rules the waves...
Yes of course, it's blame the workers, not the bosses who failed to keep up with the rest of the market...
Kinematic design, where a mechanism is analysed so as to reduce the number of parts that need precision to a logical minimum, is a British invention. Traditionally, German engineers made every part to high precision, which is inefficient.
Two exceptions that come to mind are the Cambridge microtome (for cutting thin sections for microscopy) and the Quad ESL-63 loudspeaker.
The Marxists had (and have) an organised policy of gaining power through the trade unions. Most working people have better things to do than play Union politics, and the Soviets took advantage of this.
Certainly there was some bad management too.
One good thing about privately owned companies is that the customers have full democratic power: if they vote against a product, it goes out of production. This doesn't happen when there is a state (or privately owned) monopoly and only one product to choose.
Hoxton Bridge
Veteran Member
That really does not warrant an answer. Your understanding of British industrial and political history is at best woeful.
tbcass
Veteran Member
Kodak was an American company whose headquarters, manufacturing and research center was in Rochester NY.
Rodger in Edmonton
Veteran Member
Found this database with an exhaustive list of defunct British camera manufacturers,
http://www.earlyphotography.co.uk/site/companies.html#A
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Rodger in Edmonton
Quaecumque vera
http://www.earlyphotography.co.uk/site/companies.html#A
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Rodger in Edmonton
Quaecumque vera
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peripheralfocus
Veteran Member
Excellent post, Bob. Glad someone filled in that history — Britain did indeed produce several top-notch consumer cameras through the 1950s, but, as you said, they were not big commercial successes.
Just to give a super bird's eye addendum to your post, from the advent of consumer cameras (the Kodak Brownie was introduced in 1900) through the 1950s, European makers dominated the enthusiast (as opposed to snapshot) market, and there were many brands from a range of countries, including France and the UK. But Germany was by far the leader; the other European makers were all second-tier in scale.
In the 1950s, of course, the Japanese came along and devastated the European camera and consumer optical instruments industries, including Germany's. The second-tier makers, like those in the U.K. (and the U.S.) were the first to fold under this competitive pressure. The exception is medium format film cameras, where European companies competed well until the effective end of that business.
As you noted, UK (and U.S.) optical instruments manufacturers turned to the military, scientific, and industrial markets instead. There are still extremely high-technology optical firms in the UK, the U.S., and, of course, Germany (and even Canada). But they don't make a lot of consumer optics, and certainly not many cameras.
Why individual countries and regions come to dominate particular industries is always an interesting question, and I haven't read what I'm sure is copious scholarship on the issue. But it doesn't seem to me that there is any single reason; it seems particular to every industry and era.
In the case of the Japanese and optics, the country's government, in the form of its Navy primarily, specifically targeted optics as a key strategic technology and drove the development of optical technology with money and pressure on Japan's industrial leaders. The first result of this push by the government was Nikon, which was created by Mitsubishi specifically at the direction of the Japanese Navy, which also contributed money and manpower from its own research lab.
It's interesting that post-war Nikon (and other Japanese brands) made the opposite migration to that of the post-war UK and U.S. firms, with the Japanese going from making military optics to making consumer optics. An important part of the explanation for that can be found just by looking at military expenditures for those countries pre and post-war.
Already, the snapshot imaging industry has moved on from Japan to China (smartphones). And the next big opportunity for a regional shift in the enthusiast photography and enthusiast consumer optics industries is undoubtedly computational imaging. The current technological leader in that field, by a wide margin, is the U.S., but any U.S. consumer optics companies will have their stuff manufactured in China. And Chinese companies (i.e. Chinese brands) will likely win the mass market battle in the long run, no matter what.
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I lived through it. Did you ?
Anthony1970
Veteran Member
They have the " smarts " that's why they don't wanna play in such market.
Indeed very smart.
mamallama
Veteran Member
Kodak still is an American company whose headquarters, manufacturing and research center is in Rochester NY.
Wellington100
Veteran Member
Britain is the world leader in cameras, every corner of every public place has a CCTV watching you. Its only a matter of time before they are added into public loos as well.
Mass production was never Britains big thing. Remember Cool Britannia. Tony Blair's effort to stop the messy business of actually making things in the UK and instead design and market them and let Johnny Foreigner get their hands dirty actually making the stuff. Turns out Johnny Foreigner knew how to design and market stuff as well.
A lot of this IMHO was driven by the British disdain for its own working classes who filled the ranks of manufacturing jobs, far better to let them fester in unemployment then to deal with them in the workplace because of their Marxist leanings. Even the Labour Party under Blair ended up feeling this way I think because that remains the key split in the party to this day. Its the Oxbridge educated toffs vs the scruffs from up North and now that same class system is a big part of the divide between the Brexiteers and the Remainers. Not all of it but a lot of it.
All in all, I would argue that Britains mass manufacturing never survived its class system a system that is still a blight on the country though perhaps to a less extent than before. Perhaps the Millenials will bury the class system but somehow I think not.
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absquatulate
Guest
The vast majority of the British working class don't have marxists leanings, like America, it's the middle class that are the problem in that area, our education system is infected with them.
That's basically the middle class left vs the working class, the "toffs" as you call them are split, though landowners like the EU because of the ludicrous grants they get.
Working class millenials are much the same as before, the middle class millenials will be even more of a problem thanks to comrade Corbyn and Labour abandoning their historical base in favour of anyone else.
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