In 1909,
21-year-old Paul Franke joined Voigtländer, a manufacturer of telescopes and binoculars and camera, met a 28-year-old precision engineer, Reinhold Heidecke. After two years, Franke left Voigtländer and became photographic dealer in Berlin and this led to the important breakthrough of Rollei camera later on.
In 1918,
Paul Franke kept on receiving enquiry from the customer to have a portable and easy-to-use camera. He went to Voigtländer and met with Heidecke while Heidecke became deputy works manager in Voigtländer.
From time to time discussion, Heidecke raised out his idea of a camera with viewfinder like periscope, but Voigtländer wasn’t interested in. However, Paul Franke was interested in.
In 1920,
Heidecke and Franke solved to setup a small plant in Brunswick registered as “Franke and Heidecke”, partially funded by Franke’s business in Berlin. The fist aim is to manufacture high-quality stereo cameras.
*Example of stereo camera photo, while two lens are installed in the same camera, so two photos are shot at the same time with a little different angle.
In 1926,
The very first Rollei camera is released, it is a roll film stereo camera “Rolleidoscope”.
In 1928,
First Twin-lens camera prototype is introduced. And actual production released year in 1929.
In 1966,
another masterpiece was announced “Rollei 35” in Photokina. It was one of the smallest 135mm film camera with 310grams, 3 millions pcs are sold.
