Manufactured or assembled in Corée from 1964 to (After) 1964.
Index of rarity in France: Rare (among non-specialized garage sales)
Inventory number: 1669

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Chronology of cameras Rank 

The two Aldis brothers were mathematicians and graduates of the prestigious Trinity College. The elder brother, named Lancelot, initially worked at Dallmeyer, where he became a lens designer. After Lancelot left Dallmeyer, the two brothers set up their own venture in Birmingham in 1902, where they designed and manufactured lenses with names like Uno, Duo, Trio, and so on. Their 1915 catalog featured 27 different lenses. During the First World War, they produced military equipment, including sighting scopes. After the war, they resumed their lens manufacturing business. Following the Second World War, they diversified their activities to produce epidiascopes and enlargers.

Rank was founded in 1937 by Arthur Rank. This company produced and distributed films, even owning a large number of movie theaters. To diversify, Rank ventured into manufacturing radios, records, televisions, and photocopiers (Rank Xerox).

In 1951, Rank acquired Aldis to expand its product offering with optical equipment.
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Obituary Section of the Royal Astronomical Society, (1946)

HUGH LANCELOT ALDIS was born in Calcutta on 1870, August 26, being the eldest of a family of nine cHldren. At the age of five he was sent home from India to England, where later on his father was appointed headmaster of Queen Mary's School, Walsall. At the age of thirteen, while attending Queen Mary's School, Walsall, he gained a scholarship to the City of London School. His father and' two of Hs uncles had graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, as respectively sixth wrangler, senior wrangler and second wrangler. It was not surprising, therefore, that he should himself have shown early promise of mathematical ability and gone to Ttinity College, Cambridge, in 1889, where he studied for the mathematical tripos. It was as an undergraduate at Trinity College that Hs keen interest in astronomy vvas first aroused, and at the age of tsventy he determined to make his own reflecting telescope. For this grret effort he used two 6-inch diameter glass disks, kindly given by Messrs. Chance Brothers, two line props screw. together to act as a trammel with whi. to cut a circular template, a bradawl specially ground on the doorstep to a suitable cutting edge, and an old apple-barrel filled with bricks as a rigid post. After taking grret pains in the final figuring of the reflector and the careful polishing of the 45'" small mirror (the Newtoni. type of reflector having been adopted), and using an eyepiece borrowed from father's irecroscope, he had the immense satisfaction of seeing, on a clear night, both Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons admirably defined. There is little doubt that at about tHs time . inrerest in astronomy and mathematical optics rather deflected . energies from what his parents had set their hearts on, namely his attaining a good position amongst the first ten wranglers, so that when, in z892, he came out as fourteenth wrangler they were genuinely disappointed. He himself, however, was extremely contemptuous of the geometrical optire then taught at Cambridge, and had no ambitions to make himself an adept at quidily soldng the ingenious little mathematical puzzles with which the examiners sought to test the abilHes of the tripos candidates in those days. On going down from Cambridge he was appointed to a position on the scientific staff of Messrs. J. H. Dallmeyer, Ltd., where he threw himself heart and soul into the task of mastering the dreign of photographic lenses, using mathematical formulae of his own devising. In 1896 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and tHs year saw the fruits of his labours in the introduction of the well-known series of anastigmat lenses }mown as " The Dallmeyer Stigmatic". By the use of the so-called Jena glasses and his own methods of mathematical computation he was able to produce an portrait lens giving very good corrections over a total angle of 6o.. A later variant of this "Stigmatic" lens, known as the "Series 3", curiously enough completely anticipated the Zeiss-Tessar patent. Nobody seems to have noticed this at the time, and it remareed for several years one of the amazing secrets in the optical world. He married Violet Atkinson, daughter of Dr. Atkinson, of Surbiton, in moo, and shortly afterwa.s, in x9oa, he left Messrs. Dallmeyer and, joining . younger brother in Birmingham, founded the firm of Aldis Brothers at Sparkhill. In the previous year he had read a paper before the Royal Photographic Society on the constru.on of photographic objectives, in which he had shovrn how the problem of satisfying the conditions for a fully corrected anastigmat lens could to a certain extent be compared with the problem of ensuring the equilibrium of a system of parallel forces, and he demonstrated that there were no theoretical reasons why anastigmat lenses should not be grretly simplified.
After the formation of the new partnership he realised . great ambition, and brought out the simple form of anastigmat bearing name, involving a cemented combination placed in front of a single simple lens. T. became known all over the world as " The Aldis Lens". In x908, after the accident to the submarine Ax, involving the loss of eleven lives, he was successful in designing a model of a submarine periscope giving a view all round the horizon in one image. At the time it was thought that this would be instrumental in preventing any recurrenoe of such tragedies. 19n, knowing how completely he had anticipated the Zeiss-Tessar patent, he boldly brought out the well-known Al. /4.3 lens, which was an infringement of that patent. Only after many thousand Aldisfbps lens. had been sold did the firrn of Zeiss discover that their patent had been infringed, but in view of the manifest anticipation by the Series 3 lens mentioned above, the legal proceedings completely broke down, a. nothing more was heard of any Zeiss opposition after the 194-18 war. During that war he designed a telescopic rifle sight and an important invention known as " The Aldis Unit Sight", in which he vvas the first to realise the important optical resul. obtained by four co-axial equal objectiv. each placed in telescopic adjustment with i. adjacent element. Such a telescope gives the effect of looking through an empty napkin-ring, and this was found to be the ideal sight for aiming the fixed gun in fighting aeroplanes. He also designed a very good zo-inchf/3.6 anastigmat for aerial reconnaissance work, and later a Camera Aiming Sight having " eye freedom", which was such a useful feature of the well-known Aldis Unit Sight. After the x94-18 war the Solar Physics Observatory purchased an f/4.5 long-focus lens of his own design. He retired in 1938 from the firm that he had founded, and lived at his home at Lyme Regis, Dorset, until his d.th, on 1945 July x8, after a very short a. quite unexpected illness, leaving a widow, two sons and a daughter.

A. C. W. ALDIS.

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