M875 Reconsidered

1. Introduction

M875 is one of the strangest surviving objects connected with the early Leica story. It looks crude, but not necessarily early. It has no finder, no accessory shoe and no normal lens mount, yet it also has constructional features which seem closer to the postwar Barnack cameras than to the prewar Ur-Leicas.

The difficulty is that M875 has sometimes been identified with Barnack’s lost exposure tester — the small 35mm device he is thought to have made while working on the Leitz movie camera. That exposure tester is an important part of the story and may well have been Barnack’s first miniature camera. But it does not follow that M875 is that camera.

1.1 Another viewpoint

This article proposes a different reading: M875 may have been a postwar microscope camera, probably dating from around 1920, built around Barnack’s developing 35mm mechanism but intended for scientific rather than handheld use.

That interpretation would explain many of its otherwise awkward features: the 38mm front tube, the circular image channel, the rear focusing position, the unsprung external shutter, the tripod bush, the missing accessory shoe and the absence of strap eyelets. It would also place M875 more naturally between the postwar Ur-Leica and the Handmuster, rather than before the first Ur-Leica.

1.2 Time to reconsider

The argument is not offered as final proof. No known published document yet identifies M875 explicitly as a microscope camera. But the physical evidence, the sequence of features and Barnack’s own remark about “sound development” all suggest that M875 should be reconsidered. The lost exposure tester may have been the true beginning of Barnack’s miniature-camera work; M875 may be something later, more specialised, and rather different.

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2. The puzzle of M875

M875 is difficult because it combines crude execution with advanced-looking design choices. If it is placed before the Ur-Leica, some of its features have to appear, disappear and then reappear in the later Leica line. If it is placed after the postwar Ur-Leica, the sequence becomes much neater.

2.1 The first Barnack camera

This is especially important because a separate early exposure tester is believed to have existed. Barnack was working on the Leitz movie camera and is understood to have made a small still-exposure device at that time. That camera is now lost. Some have therefore been tempted to identify M875 with it, but the physical evidence does not sit comfortably with that conclusion.

The lost exposure tester would more naturally have resembled the first Ur-Leica in general arrangement, but using the smaller 18 × 24mm cine frame together with the 5cm Kino-Tessar lens cell. It would have needed to behave like a practical exposure-checking camera. M875, by contrast, lacks the fittings one would expect for a camera aimed and used in the ordinary way.

2.2 Later developments

The tripod bush is the clearest example. If M875 came first, Barnack fitted a support socket, omitted it from the Ur-Leicas, and then restored it on later cameras. That is possible, but inelegant. If M875 was built around 1920, the tripod bush becomes a postwar refinement, introduced at the point where the camera architecture was becoming more practical.

The same applies to the body. The screwed top plate and overlapping baseplate do not feel like features from an earlier constructional stage. They feel like part of the move towards the Handmuster and the 0-Series.

2.3 The missing shoe

The missing accessory shoe points the other way. If M875 was a post-Ur handheld camera, the lack of a shoe is awkward. From the Ur-Leicas onwards, an accessory shoe was needed for a viewfinder, and later for rangefinding accessories. But if M875 was a microscope camera, the omission is entirely reasonable. A microscope camera does not need a viewfinder or rangefinder. The microscope provides the optical path, and focusing could be done at the film plane.

In other words, M875 may only look anomalous because it has been judged as the wrong kind of object.

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3. The discovery and identification of M875

M875 came to wider public attention comparatively late. In May 1992, Georg Mann published an article in VIDOM after visiting the Leica Museum in Solms. There he encountered a previously little-known “photo housing” kept in a sheet-metal cabinet containing early Barnack material.¹

3.1 The Barnack cabinet

The cabinet has since been identified in discussion as the Barnackschrank, or Barnack cabinet. Bill Rosauer later reported, after correspondence with the Leitz Park archive and a visit to Wetzlar in 2022, that the object was still held in the museum archive and that it had apparently passed from Oskar Barnack to Wilhelm Albert.²

Mann’s article seems to have been the first detailed public account to bring the object to the attention of many Leica collectors. William Fagan has also pointed to a 1979 Barnack and Berek Newsletter article by Heinz Richter which appears to refer to the device.³ For that reason, it is safest to say that Mann’s article publicly rediscovered and illustrated M875 in detail, rather than discovering it.

3.2 A matter of perspective

“M875” is actually a later museum or archive inventory number, not an original Leitz designation. Mann found the object with a red label marked “M 875”, assigned by Prof. S. Rosch of the Leitz collection. The label identifies the object within the collection; it does not tell us what Barnack called it, when it was made, or what it was made for.

This is why the camera has remained open to interpretation. Its rough appearance encouraged the idea that it might be very early, perhaps even earlier than the Ur-Leica. But a special-purpose workshop instrument can look crude without being primitive. The more useful question is not simply when M875 looks as though it was made, but what kind of work its features were designed to perform.

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4. The conventional interpretations

M875 has usually been explained in one of two ways. It has either been treated as the lost exposure tester, and therefore as the first Barnack miniature camera, or as a very early general-purpose 35mm camera made before the Ur-Leica. Both views have understandable attractions. Both also leave problems.

4.1 The lost exposure tester

The exposure tester itself should not be dismissed as speculative. Barnack is thought to have made such a device while working on the Leitz movie camera, and it may well have been his first miniature camera. Its purpose would have been practical: to make a still test exposure on cine film before committing a larger amount of film in the motion-picture camera.

That lost tester would most likely have been a small 35mm camera using the cine frame size of 18 × 24mm, rather than the later Leica double-frame format. It would also make sense for it to have used the Kino-Tessar lens cell associated with the Leitz movie-camera work.

On that basis, the lost exposure tester need not be imagined as something like M875. It may have been closer in principle to the first Ur-Leica: a small, direct, lens-and-film camera for making real photographic test exposures.

4.2 M875 as the exposure tester

Some have identified M875 with this lost tester. The appeal is obvious. M875 is crude, it uses 35mm film, and it lacks the refinements of a later camera. If one is looking for a primitive Barnack exposure device, M875 looks at first like a candidate.

But the fit is not very good. M875 has no normal taking lens or lens mount. Its 38mm front tube, circular image path, rear focusing position and external unsprung shutter all point away from ordinary exposure testing. The absence of a finder and accessory shoe is also awkward if the camera was meant to be aimed at a scene in the usual way.

An exposure tester would not need to be elegant, but it would need to be straightforward to use as a camera. M875 looks less like a rough field tester than a support-mounted optical attachment.

4.3 M875 as the first handheld Barnack camera

A related interpretation is that M875 was simply an early 35mm still-camera experiment made before the Ur-Leica.

Again, the crude appearance encourages this idea. But several features do not look earlier than the Ur-Leicas, they look later. M875 has a screwed-on top plate, an overlapping baseplate, a take-up-spindle wind and a tripod bush. These are not just cosmetic details, they belong to the sort of construction seen in the postwar development of the Leica.

If M875 really came before the prewar Ur-Leicas, we have to explain why these features appeared, disappeared, and then reappeared in later cameras. That is possible, but it is not the neatest explanation. It makes the development look rather erratic, when Barnack himself later described the programme as showing a steady uniformity from year to year.

4.4 The difficulty with the usual views

The important point is to separate two questions. The lost exposure tester probably existed, and may well have been the first Barnack miniature camera. But M875 does not have to be that camera.

Crudeness is not the same as earliness. A special-purpose instrument can be crude because it does not need to be elegant, not because it is primitive.

As the lost exposure tester, M875 has too many features that seem unnecessary or inconvenient. As a first handheld Barnack camera, it has too many later-looking constructional details. But as a support-mounted optical instrument, possibly for microscope use, many of those same features begin to make sense.

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5. The design-progression evidence

A useful way to approach M875 is not to begin with the traditional story, but with the camera’s features. Where do they fit in the known progression from the Ur-Leicas to the Handmuster?

When viewed this way, M875 does not sit comfortably before the prewar Ur-Leicas. It fits much more naturally between the postwar Ur-Leica and the Handmuster.

5.1 The winder

One of the most important clues is the winder.

On the prewar Ur-Leicas, the winding arrangement was associated with the sprocket wheel. On the postwar cameras, the wind was transferred to the take-up spindle. M875 follows this later pattern.

That matters because the winder is not a minor external fitting. It is part of the film-transport architecture. If M875 uses the later arrangement, that is strong evidence that it belongs with the postwar development of the camera, not before it.

5.2 The top plate

The top-plate construction also points in the same direction.

The earliest Ur-Leicas had a more integrated body construction. Later cameras moved towards a separate top plate screwed to the body shell. M875 has this later, screwed top-plate arrangement.

This is just the kind of practical refinement one would expect as Barnack moved from handmade experimental bodies towards a more serviceable design.

5.3 The baseplate

The same applies to the baseplate.

The prewar Ur-Leicas had a flush-fitting base. Later cameras had a baseplate which overlapped the body shell. M875 again follows the later arrangement.

This is a small detail visually, but an important one structurally. The overlapping baseplate became part of the standard Leica construction. Its presence on M875 makes more sense if the camera belongs to the postwar sequence.

5.4 The shutter crate and internal construction

M875 also appears to share the move towards a more enclosed internal working structure, having an inner block containing the imaging channel, recessed film guide, baseplate retaining thread, sprocket wheel mounts and bodyshell mounting points. This is another feature that looks less like a first attempt and more like a refinement.

The image shows the M875 underside, with a reproduction prewar Ur-Leica above and the Handmuster camera below. Note that the sprocket wheel is to the right on the M875, and to the left on the other two.

A primitive camera might be expected to have simpler, more open construction. M875 instead seems to show the same trend seen in the later Barnack cameras: a clearer separation between the body shell and the internal functionality.

While we’re here, note the blanked-out mounting point on the Handmuster in almost the same position as the screw thread on the M875. Could this mark the transition between the baseplate retaining screw and the end catch that all Barnack Leicas have used ever since?

5.5 The baseplate retaining screw

The retaining screw on the camera baseplate is another difference between the first prototype and the M875, hinting at its postwar design.

On the prewar Ur-Leica, the retaining screw protruded below the baseplate, so the camera wasn’t able to stand flat on a supporting surface. All postwar Barnack cameras have a flush-fitting retaining screw or catch, allowing the baseplate to be perfectly flat.

This is another example of greater practicality in design, which also appears on the M875.

5.6 The tripod bush

The tripod bush is perhaps the most obvious problem for the usual early dating.

If M875 predates the Ur-Leicas, we have to explain why Barnack provided a tripod bush, then left it off the Ur-Leicas, only for it to return on later cameras. That is possible, but it is not very tidy.

If M875 is placed after the postwar Ur-Leica, the sequence is much cleaner. The tripod bush becomes a newly introduced practical feature, then retained on the Handmuster and later cameras.

This is especially persuasive if M875 was a microscope camera. In that case the bush was not simply a convenience for ordinary photography. It may have been needed to support or stabilise the camera in a microscope-camera arrangement.

5.7 A pattern, not a coincidence

No single feature proves the date of M875. The strength of the argument lies in the pattern.

M875 shares a group of features with the postwar and later cameras:

• take-up-spindle wind
• screwed top plate
• overlapping baseplate
• more enclosed internal construction
• flush-mounted baseplate retainer
• tripod bush

Taken together, these are difficult to dismiss as coincidence. They suggest that M875 belongs not before the Ur-Leica, but after the main Barnack concept had already been established and was being refined.

This would place M875 naturally around 1920: after the postwar Ur-Leica, but before the Handmuster. It may not be the direct ancestor of the production Leica, but it appears to use the same developing constructional language.

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6. Barnack’s “sound development” statement

Barnack’s own later comments are useful here, although they should be used with care.

In a 1960 article in Leica Fotografie, he described the miniature-camera programme as showing a “noteworthy uniformity from year to year”. He added that this was what one could rightly call “sound development”.⁴

This is not a direct statement about M875. Barnack was not giving us a dated inventory of prototypes, and we should not pretend that he was. But the remark is still important, because it tells us how he understood the development of the Leica: not as a series of disconnected experiments, but as a steady process of refinement.

6.1 A postwar development

On that basis, M875 is better seen as part of Barnack’s postwar work. Its construction looks like a development from the later Ur-Leica rather than a predecessor of the first one. If it was a microscope camera, that would explain why it borrowed the developing Leica architecture while omitting features needed only for handheld use.

Barnack’s phrase “sound development” therefore gives useful context. It does not settle the question, but it makes the postwar interpretation more plausible. It suggests that M875 should be judged not by its roughness, but by the direction in which its features point.

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7. The microscope-camera hypothesis

The most coherent explanation for M875 may be that it was not a general-purpose camera at all. As a microscope camera, it could have inherited Barnack’s postwar miniature-camera architecture.

This interpretation explains many of the object’s oddities without needing to treat them as mistakes, missing parts or abandoned ideas.

7.1 The front tube

The front of M875 does not look like a normal lens mount. It has a projecting tube with an internal diameter of 38mm.

For a handheld camera, this is awkward. For a microscope camera, it is much easier to understand. The tube may have acted as a coupling to a microscope or optical attachment, rather than as a mount for an ordinary taking lens. It would not necessarily have fitted every microscope directly; adaptors could have been used for different instruments or optical arrangements.

In that case, the absence of a conventional lens mount is not a defect. It is part of the camera’s intended use.

7.2 The circular image channel

M875 also has a circular image path. Again, this is not what one would expect if the camera were designed around a normal rectangular photographic image.

But a microscope projects through a circular optical path. A circular channel is therefore quite natural if the camera was meant to receive an image from a microscope tube.

This feature is one of the strongest signs that M875 may have been made for optical-instrument use rather than ordinary photography.

7.3 The internal wooden block and focusing screen

The internal cage of M875 is a simple wooden block containing the imaging hole and the sprocket-wheel mounting. It also has a recess for the image area of the film, so that the emulsion would not be scratched during winding.

The rear opening appears to allow a ground-glass focusing screen to be placed against the back of this block. Crucially, the circular screen would sit on the sprocket area of the block, placing it at the film plane. This makes the focusing-screen interpretation much stronger. It is not merely that there is a convenient hole at the back of the camera; the geometry appears to put the screen where it needs to be for focusing, before the film is loaded.

There does not appear to be any provision for retaining such a screen in place, which is important. It suggests that the screen would only work if the camera were facing downwards, allowing gravity to hold it on the block.

That is exactly the orientation one would expect if M875 were mounted on a microscope.

7.4 The external sliding shutter

The shutter is another important clue. It is an external sliding plate, and it is clearly unsprung.

There are no light-trap features, although the plate is a tight fit. This is not ideal for daylight photography. A tight sliding plate may be good enough in subdued indoor light, but it is a poor solution for a practical outdoor camera.

For microscope work, however, it makes much more sense. The camera would be used indoors, under controlled or subdued light. Exposures might be relatively long, and the subject would be static. A manually operated sliding shutter would be adequate for that sort of work.

The shutter therefore seems less like a failed snapshot mechanism and more like a simple exposure control for a mounted optical instrument.

7.5 The tripod bush

The tripod bush also fits the microscope interpretation.

If M875 were a normal early handheld camera, the tripod bush is difficult to place in the sequence. It appears on M875, seems to be absent from the Ur-Leicas, and then returns on later cameras.

If M875 was a microscope camera, the bush has an immediate purpose. It could provide a support or stabilising point for the camera when attached to a microscope or stand.

Once introduced, the feature would also be useful on ordinary cameras, so it could naturally be retained on the Handmuster and later Leicas.

7.6 The left-hand winder

The winder has often seemed puzzling because, when the camera is viewed as a normal handheld camera, it is on the left. This is unlike most cameras and all other Leicas and prototypes.

But orientation changes everything. If M875 were mounted on a microscope with the top plate facing the user, the winder would fall naturally to the operator’s right, as shown in this simulated image.

This is a particularly elegant point, because it turns an apparent error into a functional feature. The control layout may look wrong only because we have been imagining the camera in the wrong position.

7.7 The missing accessory shoe

The absence of an accessory shoe is another useful clue. From the Ur-Leicas onwards, a shoe was needed for an external finder, and later for a rangefinder. If M875 were a post-Ur handheld camera, the lack of a shoe would be odd.

For a microscope camera, it is expected. The operator would not need a viewfinder or rangefinder. Framing and focusing would be done through the microscope image, probably with the aid of a ground-glass screen at the film plane.

So the missing shoe is not necessarily evidence of an early date. It may simply show that M875 was not intended for handheld viewing.

7.8 No strap eyelets

The same applies to the lack of strap eyelets. A microscope camera would not be carried around the neck or shoulder. It would be mounted on, or used with, an optical instrument. Strap eyelets would serve no purpose.

Their absence therefore fits the proposed use, and explains why this was not a design concern at the time. The lack of eyelets continued until the introduction of the Leica III over a decade later.

7.9 A specialised branch, not an incomplete camera

Taken together, these details make a strong case that M875 was a specialised instrument rather than an incomplete general camera.

The 38mm front tube, circular image channel, rear focusing-screen position, external unsprung shutter, tripod bush, left-hand winder, missing accessory shoe and lack of strap eyelets all point in the same direction. They suggest a camera designed for controlled, support-mounted optical work.

On this reading, M875 was not a failed attempt at a handheld Leica. Nor was it necessarily the first Barnack camera. It was more likely a specialised offshoot of the same developing system: a microscope camera built around the emerging Leica body architecture, probably around 1920.

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8. Leitz context: why a microscope camera would make sense

The microscope-camera interpretation also fits the wider Leitz context.

Before the Leica became famous as a camera, Leitz was above all an optical and scientific-instrument firm. Microscopes were central to the company’s identity. Barnack was not working in isolation from that tradition; he was working inside a firm whose expertise lay in precision optics, mechanical instruments and photomicrography outfits as shown here.

8.1 A natural progression

Seen in that setting, a small-format microscope camera is not an unlikely experiment. It would have been a natural thing for Leitz to consider. The company already understood microscopes, optical tubes, stands, focusing arrangements and controlled illumination. A compact 35mm camera body adapted for microscope work would sit comfortably within that world.

This is important because M875 does not look like a normal outdoor camera. It lacks the things a handheld camera needs, but it does have features that make sense for an optical instrument: an adapter tube, a circular image path, a focusing-screen position at the film plane, a support attachment and a simple shutter suited to long exposures.

8.2 Movie film for scientific use

There is also a practical reason why 35mm film might have appealed. It was small, readily available through cine use, and suited to compact mechanisms. Barnack’s great insight was to adapt 35mm cine film for still photography. But that same idea need not have been limited to handheld cameras. It could also have been useful for scientific recording, including photomicrography.

A microscope camera would also explain why M875 looks both familiar and unfamiliar. Its body and film transport belong to the Barnack line, but its fittings belong to another purpose. It is not surprising, therefore, that it shares some features with the later Leica while omitting others.

8.3 Miniature camera meets optical instrument

This would make M875 a very Leitz object: part photographic experiment, part scientific instrument. Rather than standing outside the Leica story, it may show how Barnack’s miniature-camera work overlapped with the company’s older optical-instrument tradition.

That overlap is worth stressing. The Leica did not emerge from a camera company in the usual sense. It emerged from a microscope maker. If M875 was a microscope camera, it would remind us that the early Leica was not only a photographic invention, but also a product of Leitz’s broader culture of precision optical engineering.

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9. Reconstructing the proposed sequence

If M875 is separated from the lost exposure tester and placed after the postwar Ur-Leica, the sequence becomes much clearer. This is a useful way to avoid forcing the object into the wrong category. If we ask why M875 is such a poor handheld camera, it seems puzzling. If we ask how it might work as a microscope camera, many of its oddities become sensible.

A possible sequence is as follows.

9.1 The lost exposure tester

The first Barnack miniature camera may have been the now-lost exposure tester made during the Leitz movie-camera work.

This would probably have used the cine frame size of 18 × 24mm and the Kino-Tessar lens cell which was also used in the Leitz movie camera. Its purpose was practical rather than revolutionary: to make still test exposures on cine film. It was the beginning of Barnack’s miniature-camera work, but not necessarily the beginning of the Leica form as later standardised.

9.2 Prewar Ur-Leicas

The prewar Ur-Leicas established the basic Leica idea: a compact still camera using 35mm cine film horizontally, giving the larger 24 × 36mm frame.

At this stage the camera was still highly experimental. It was a handheld miniature camera, but not yet the practical Leica of the 1920s. Some later features were still absent, and the construction had not yet settled into the familiar form.

9.3 Postwar Ur-Leica

After the war, Barnack’s design moved closer to the later Leica pattern.

Important changes appear to include the take-up-spindle wind, a screwed top plate, an overlapping baseplate and a more developed internal structure. These are not merely refinements of appearance. They point towards a more practical and serviceable camera.

This postwar stage provides the natural starting point for understanding M875.

9.4 M875, circa 1920

M875 may belong here: after the postwar Ur-Leica, but before the Handmuster.

On this interpretation, it was not the lost exposure tester and not a direct attempt to make a general-purpose camera. It was a specialised microscope camera, built using Barnack’s developing 35mm architecture.

That would explain why it shares the later constructional features but lacks the fittings needed for handheld use. It would also explain the introduction of the tripod bush, the 38mm front tube, the circular image path, the wooden block, the ground-glass position at the film plane and the external sliding shutter.

M875 would therefore be a postwar offshoot, not a prewar ancestor.

9.5 Handmuster, circa 1921

The Handmuster then represents the return of the postwar architecture to a general-purpose camera.

It retains the features that had now proved useful: the take-up-spindle wind, screwed top plate, overlapping baseplate, tripod bush and more mature internal construction. But unlike M875, it is clearly directed towards normal photographic use.

This is where the Leica line begins to look recognisably practical.

9.6 Nullserie and Leica I

The Nullserie cameras took the idea into real-world testing. The Leica I then turned it into a production camera.

By this point, the main constructional decisions had been settled. The body form, baseplate, tripod bush, film transport and accessory provision all belonged to a coherent system.

9.7 A cleaner reading

This proposed sequence has one great advantage: it avoids unnecessary reversals.

Instead of asking why Barnack fitted various features to M875, removed them from the Ur-Leicas and then restored them later, we can see those features as postwar additions. They appear when the camera architecture is becoming more practical and are retained afterwards.

We can now allow the lost exposure tester to occupy its own earlier place. M875 can then be judged by its physical features, which point more naturally to a later, specialised role.

In short, the sequence becomes:

lost exposure tester → prewar Ur-Leicas → postwar Ur-Leica → M875 → Handmuster → Nullserie → Leica I

That order fits the physical evidence more comfortably than placing M875 at the very beginning. By around 1920, the same basic film-transport and body ideas could apparently be applied both to scientific instrumentation and to the emerging handheld camera.

That makes M875 more interesting, not less. Its importance lies not in being first, but in showing how flexible the early Leica idea had become before it reached production form.

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10. Conclusion

M875 remains an enigmatic object, but perhaps it is enigmatic because it has been placed in the wrong category.

10.1 The exposure tester

The lost exposure tester deserves its place at the beginning of Barnack’s miniature-camera work. It was made during his work on the Leitz movie camera, most likely for 18 × 24mm cine-format test exposures, and reportedly used the Kino-Tessar lens cell. But that does not mean M875 has to be identified with it.

If M875 is treated as that first exposure tester, or as a primitive ancestor of the Ur-Leica, too many features have to be explained as anomalies. The tripod bush appears too early. The accessory shoe is missing when it ought to be present. The winder seems to be on the wrong side. The front tube, circular image path, rear focusing position and external unsprung shutter all sit uneasily with the idea of a general-purpose handheld camera or ordinary exposure tester.

10.2 The microscope camera

If, however, M875 is seen as a specialised microscope camera, those same features begin to work together. The tube becomes an optical coupling. The circular image path suits microscope projection. The rear opening allows a ground-glass screen to sit at the film plane. The unsprung shutter suits slow exposures under controlled light. The tripod bush provides support. The missing finder, shoe and strap eyelets are no longer omissions, because they would have served no purpose.

This interpretation also gives M875 a more natural place in the development sequence. Rather than preceding the prewar Ur-Leicas, it appears to fit better after the postwar Ur-Leica and before the Handmuster. Its constructional features point in that direction: the take-up-spindle wind, screwed top plate, overlapping baseplate, enclosed working structure and tripod bush all sit comfortably in the postwar line of development.

10.3 Steady progress

Barnack’s own remark about “sound development” is helpful here. It does not prove the date or purpose of M875, but it supports the idea of a steady progression. Placing M875 around 1920 avoids the need for useful features to appear, vanish and then reappear. It makes the development of the Leica look more consistent.

The case is not yet proven. Without a workshop note, drawing, catalogue reference or contemporary photograph, M875 cannot be identified with certainty as a microscope camera. But the physical evidence points strongly in that direction, and the hypothesis explains more of the object than the conventional alternatives.

10.4 A deeper viewpoint

M875 may therefore be neither the first Barnack camera nor the lost exposure tester. It may be something subtler and more interesting: a specialised Leitz scientific camera, built around Barnack’s developing 35mm mechanism, at the moment when the Leica was moving from private experiment towards practical instrument.

Seen this way, M875 does not sit outside the Leica story, it deepens it. It reminds us that the Leica was born not from a camera company, but from a maker of precision optical instruments. Before it became the camera that changed photography, the Barnack miniature camera may also have served another Leitz world: the laboratory, the microscope stand, and the careful recording of images too small to see with the naked eye.

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Footnotes

1. Mike Eckman, “Oskar Barnack’s First Leica”, 15 December 2022. Eckman summarises Georg Mann’s May 1992 VIDOM article, including Mann’s visit to the Leica Museum in Solms, the sheet-metal cabinet, the red “M 875” label, the wooden core and the lack of lens, focal-plane shutter or viewfinder. ↩

2. Leica Forum discussion, “Die Mutter der Ur-Leica”, November 2022. Bill Rosauer describes confirming M875 in the Leitz Park archive, refers to the Barnackschrank, and states that the item had passed from Barnack to Wilhelm Albert. ↩

3. Leica Forum discussion, “Die Mutter der Ur-Leica”, December 2022. William Fagan notes that a Heinz Richter article in the Barnack and Berek Newsletter of October–December 1979 appears to mention the device, meaning M875 may have been known before Mann’s 1992 VIDOM article. ↩

4. Oskar Barnack’s 1960 Leica Fotografie recollection is quoted in several Leica-history discussions, including Summichronica’s “Ur-Leica Prototypes”, where the development of the early Barnack cameras is described as unusually continuous. ↩