Yashica telescope...!

It seems that anything that had a glass lens to look through - for any number of purposes - wasn't off-limits for inclusion into Yashica's product portfolio. The line of telescopes baring their branding looks yo be fairly significant, going by the breadth of examples in this topic on an astronomy forum.

The more these types of rebranded and non-photographic items seem to pop up, I'm starting to think there's something more than simple rebranding going on. With opera glasses, binoculars, and now telescopes, there's more than a few rebranded categories, and they all share one basic element... optical glass lenses. I'm looking at this idea from the perspective of the company executives responsible for not only sustaining profits, but looking for ways to increase them - outside the range of manufactured products like cameras and camera lenses.

A certain glass and lens supplier was acquired in 1968, and it's no secret that as an independent company they had contracts with many companies to produce parts and compete products. I think it's a mistake to assume that after they were a wholly owned company, they stopped or slowed being contract suppliers for others, and Porst, Revue, and Ricoh products (among others) bare that out. There's also a fair chance that their client list expanded in other areas, and Yashica may have even had a reciprocal deal working with any new endeavours to provide optics in the form of lens elements or complete assemblies. With them being a primary supplier of key components, they may have gotten substantial discounts on those finished goods, to rebrand and sell to expand their catalog, without having to expand their own manufacturing expertise and capacity in non-photo products.

To some extent, this may be one of the primary reasons that drew Zeiss in when they went shopping for a partner to resurrect the Contax brand.

There's mention of Yashica microscope ads from an article by Paul Sokk on his site showing up in The Free Singapore Express in the 1960,'s with a notation by him that they shouldn't be mistaken for the ones from Yashima Optical. However, if you consider that the president of Yashima was in fact the brother to Yashica's president and founder, it might not be such a stretch to think that Tomioka supplied both companies with lens elements (and/or assemblies), and any Yashica branded microscopes actually could have been rebranded Yashima products. I'm not claiming that as fact... only proposing it as a possibility.

I haven't gone digging yet for any microscope pictures to attribute to any Yashica branding and what Yashima ties there might have been, but it's on my todo list.

And speaking of one of the Free Singapore Express articles - here's the other article Paul mentions about their expedition into electronics, also from 1960 (July 21st): eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/freepress19600721-1.2.153.16 There's a brief "I agree" acknowledement needed to access that page, but otherwise, it will eventually show a scan of the printed article.