Heinz Kilfitt was born on 29 May 1898 in Hörntrop-Wattenscheid, Germany; he died on 11 August 1980 in Munich, Germany. He is probably best known for the design of the spring driven 35mm ''

Robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

'' still cameras taking 24×24mm frames on

135 film 135 film, more popularly referred to as 35 mm film or 35 mm, is a format of photographic film used for still photography. It is a film with a film gauge of loaded into a standardized type of magazine – also referred to as a casse ...

as well as being a lens maker, renowned for the ''Macro-Kilars'' and the manufacture of the ''Voigtländer Zoomar'' that was designed by Frank Gerhardt Back (1902-1981). He was the son of a watchmaker and christened Heinrich Wilhelm Kilfitt. He spent his early youth repairing watches and taking an interest in optics and photography. At the optical company R. Neumann in Berlin he was hired as the head of the Photography department. Combining his watch repair and photography skills he designed the spring driven ''

'' camera for H. H. Berning in 1930 for fast series of single frame photographs. In the early 1950s he conceived the very compact 35mm SLR ''

Mecaflex The Mecaflex is a 35mm SLR camera for 50 exposures of 24 × 24 mm. It was presented at the photokina in Cologne in 1951, and launched commercially about two years later. The design is by Heinz Kilfitt, who is also known for designing the origin ...

'' camera to be manufactured by Metz Apparatefabik in Fürth, Germany. In 1964 he established the Kilfitt Optische Fabrik in Munich.

References

External links

* http://www.robot-camera.de/RoBoT_Historie/Heinz_Kilfitt/heinz_kilfitt.html * http://data.bnf.fr/16510987/heinz_kilfitt/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Kilfitt, Heinz 1898 births 1980 deaths 20th-century German inventors Optical engineers