Emil Busche

Emil Busch (1820-1888) was a German optical instrument maker born in Berlin. He took over running the spectacle making business of his uncle, Eduard Duncker in the German town of Rathenow, in 1845 and introduced camera making in 1852.

The company invented the wide angle lens ‘Pantoscop’ in 1865 and went on to win prizes for its photographic products. The company was floated on the stock market in 1872 and became known as ‘Emil Busch A-G’.

The company improved its workers facilities but still had a lot of home-workers. In 1877 Emile and his uncle Eduard set up a support foundation for their workers which provided funds for social and educational purposes as well as making provision for them, should the company be closed.

By 1896 there were 163 optical businesses registered in Rathenow. Many of these had developed from the homes of home-based Busch employees and by 1900 the town was recognised as the centre of the optical industry in Germany.

The company continued to innovate and produced a set of lens elements that could be combined to provide several focus variants as a complete lens – a manual predecessor to the telephoto lens, This was known as the Busch Vademecum. From 1910 several of their products started to be branded ‘Roia’ or ROJA.

Zeiss (the predominant optical engineers of the time in Germany) took over a majority shareholding in Busch. Busch kept on making cameras but stopped making lenses.

After World War II the company ceased to exist as the East German government founded state sponsored optical manufacturers.