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History of Hasselblad
Victor Hasselblad AB is a Swedish manufacturer of medium-format cameras and photographic equipment based in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Although the company was first established in 1841 in Sweden, the name Hasselblad did not become famous in North American until the 1960s, when its cameras were picked to be use on Apollo space missions.
The company founded by the ancestors of Victor Hasselblad did not originally make cameras. Instead, it was established as a trading company. Because the son of the founder was interested in photography, a division of the company was set aside for importing film and other photographic equipment from the Eastman (Kodak) corporation. The photography business did prove to be profitable, with Hasselblad become sole distributor of Kodak products in 1988.
It was World War II that propelled the firm into manufacturing cameras. The Swedish government had captured a German aerial surveillance camera and in 1940 approached Victor Hasselblad to develop an aerial camera for its own use.
By the end of the war, Hasselblad had delivered more than 200 cameras to the Swedish military. Hasselblad also produced watch and clock parts, and production continued post-war.
In 1948 the 1600F camera was released, with 50 units produced in ’49 and little more than 200 produced in 1950. Collectors today call this camera the Series One. The Series Two was produced from 1950 to ’53, with a production run of 3300.
In 1953 the 1000F was released and later mated with the now famous Zeiss lens, and a favourable review by Modern Photography in late 1954 help to boost sales and visibility. However, the real breakthrough came in 1957 with the release of the 500C Hasselblad camera. The 500C was so successful that the production run continued for more than 50 years.
Almost all of the still photographs taken during the Apollo program were specially modified Hasselblad cameras, including the landing on the moon
The first motor-driven camera, the 500EL, appeared in 1965 as a result of NASA requests with publicity created by NASA's use of Hasselblad products dramatically increasing name recognition for the brand.
In 1977, the 2000 series of focal plane shutter equipped models were introduced. This was the last major technical development in the course of the classic Hasselblad camera.
In 1998, Hasselblad began selling the XPan, a camera designed and made in Japan by Fujifilm. In 2002, they introduced the H-System, retroactively renaming their original camera line the V-System.
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