Founding
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The birthplace of the Rodenstock company was in Würzburg.
Previously active as a travelling salesman, Josef Rodenstock
settled in Würzburg in 1877 and started making and selling
barometers, precision scales and measuring instruments in addition
to spectacles lenses and frames from 1878 onward.
It was Josef Rodenstock’s belief
that sight defects were not an illness, but could be corrected
using the right spectacles. He developed his first lenses, the
so-called "diaphragm spectacle lenses" in 1880
and they went on to sell very well.
He
continued to register further patents, including one for a
refracting unit. Rodenstock spectacles were not cheap, but in
contrast to the already made up spectacles usual at the time, were
fitted personally to the wearer.
As early as
1882, Rodenstock was already making exports to Austria,
Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Russia. The
company relocated to Munich in 1883. Josef Rodenstock purchased
the present company premises in Munich at a branch of the Isar
which was then still outside the town limits in early 1886. The
existing residential building was converted into a handicraft
operation for the manufacture of spectacle lenses, telescopes,
camera lenses and ophthalmic optical
instruments.
Camera lenses and lens elements
were an important part of the company’s business.
Rodenstock financed the expansion of the company from the profits
from this division.
A farmhouse on the
outskirts of Regen in the Bavarian Forest was converted and
expanded for the manufacture of spectacle lenses and optical lens
elements in 1898. Additional factories close to Regen soon
followed; however, these were all closed later and at the latest
during the depression. The Regen works maintained its leading role
in the production and development of spectacle lenses and today
operates as a technology and engineering centre for spectacle lenses.
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