Small but beautiful

The Takachiho Seisakusho company was founded by Takeshi Yamashita in 1919. Initially the company made microscopes, introducing its first in 1920. The next year, the name Olympus was adopted for the company’s optical products.

The medical theme was maintained with the later introduction of the world’s first practical gastrocamera, and continues today with breakthroughs in opto-digital photography.

But for photographers, it is the cameras that define Olympus. Although some of the early models bore a resemblance to German cameras, innovative designs soon emerged, often taking a slightly sideways look at traditional concepts, while being smaller and intuitively easier to use than their contemporaries. ‘Small but beautiful’ is the phrase that comes to mind when looking at Olympus cameras.

In 1935 a research institute was set up to investigate the production of quality camera lenses. Playing a major role in the development of the first lenses, and later the cameras, was Eiichi Sakurai.

The Zuiko lens

Born in 1909, he became a celebrated Japanese photographer and also a mechanical engineer. Soon after graduating from Tokyo University he joined the Takachiho Seisakusho works as a member of the project team that developed the first camera lens. They called it the Zuiko, a name that would forever be associated with Olympus cameras. The first camera on which it appeared was the Semi-Olympus in 1936.

In 1937, Olympus made an early attempt at an interchangeable lens rangefinder camera. The brainchild of Eiichi Sakurai, the Olympus Standard showed slight influences from Leica and Contax, but instead of 35mm, it produced 6x4.5cm images on 127 film. Only around ten examples were produced and it was never marketed. A move to a larger image format resulted in the Olympus Six in 1939, just as the Second World War broke out. Japan joined the hostilities in 1940.

In 1942 the company name was changed to Takachiho Kogaku Kogyo. In 1945, when the war ended, American forces occupied Japan