Rolleiflex History - The company timeline from start to present.

I pulled this time line from one of DHW-Fototechnik's brochures and thought it was interesting.

1920 ■ Paul Franke and Reinhold Heidecke establish the “Werkstatt für Feinmechanik und Optik – Franke und Heidecke“ in Brunswick, Germany. 

1926 ■ First use of Rollei name in conjunction with Rolleidoscop stereoscopic roll-film camera. 

1928 ■ Presentation of first twin-lens Rolleiflex, a roll-film mirror-reflex camera (10 prototypes). 

.... click this link to the jump to the blog post and see the rest....

This is where it all began!  Here's a snap my wife took of me at the Rollei Factory in Braunschweig, Germany.   We were in Germany this summer on a family trip.  I had decided to upgrade my Hy6 to Mod2 specs (keeping the original body panels) and we stopped in to pick it up.  It was really wonderful to meet with Hans Hartje, his son Johannes, and Frank Will, who are all incredibly nice.  I got to see some of the custom Rollei 35's and TLR's they had on hand (very beautiful and very tempting!)  and also had a quick tour of the factory which now is located in the red brick building behind the older yellow building.  I didn't ask but I assume the yellow building is where Rollei started in the 1920's, and after my meeting, I decided to start a US dealership!  I've loved my Rollei cameras for years and taken my best pictures with them. Many of my Rollei Pals used to tease me that I should be a dealer since I knew the cameras so well and after the meeting with them it just made perfect sense to do it.    btw - I'll be posting more about the Mod2 update soon.