Got a great book today from 1935 called FED & Leica. One of the chapters says that Pioner was made on Geodezia factory at the same time as the first FED was developed. Implication is that Geodezia had gotten the plans from FED. They only made these cameras until 1936 (that was the plan according to book which was published in '35) and made about 1000 units at that time, because they were planning to put FAG into mass production instead.
Vlad
03/04/2011 19:18
, now this one page made it worth buying. The rest of the book is unfortunately a translated from German Leica manual mixed with some Soviet propaganda on how German bourgeois capitalist society had persecuted brilliant inventor Oscar Barnack who had stayed behind the scenes and how the Leitz company was making big profits for the Leica camera instead 