Focus on Norman Stauffer

Most of the initial autofocus patents were awarded to Honeywell, and most of those were for inventions of Normal Stauffer, who worked at Honeywell’s Denver office.

I’ve added lots of material about two autofocus cameras, the Konica CD35AF, which was the first autofocus 35mm, and the Minolta Maxxum 7000, which was the first 35mm SLR with in-body automatic focusing.

The Minolta Maxxums were the subject of a lawsuit by Honeywell against Minolta, which Honeywell won and for which they received $127.5 million. They then went after almost everyone else, including Nikon and Canon, and got money from them, too. In all, $300 million.

There was no lawsuit over the Konica C35AF, because Konica licensed the Visitronic autofocus technology from Honeywell. By 1980 there were 6 other rangefinders that used the same system. See the web page for the details.

I have several articles about these cameras, information about the lawsuit, and abstracts of some relevant patents. Some information about Normal Stauffer, too.