History of Hasselblad

The company was established in 1841 in Gothenburg, Sweden, as a trading company, F. W. Hasselblad and Co. The founder's son, Arvid Viktor Hasselblad, was interested in photography and started the photographic division of the company. Hasselblad's corporate website quotes him as saying I certainly don’t think that we will earn much money on this, but at least it will allow us to take pictures for free.

In 1877, Arvid Hasselblad commissioned the construction of Hasselblad's long-time headquarters building, in use until 2002.While on honeymoon, Arvid Hasselblad met George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak. In 1888, Hasselblad became the sole Swedish distributor of Eastman's products. The business was so successful that in 1908, the photographic operations were spun off into their own corporation, Fotografiska AB. Operations included a nationwide network of retail stores and photo labs. Management of the company eventually passed to Karl Erik Hasselblad, Arvid's son (grandson of founder F. W.). Karl Erik wanted his son, Victor Hasselblad, to have a wide understanding of the camera business, and sent him to Dresden, Germany, at the age of 18 (circa 1924), then the world center of the optics industry.

Victor spent the next several years studying and working in various photography related endeavors in Europe and the United States, including spending time in Rochester, New York, with George Eastman, before returning home to begin work at the family business. Due to disputes within the family, particularly with his father, Victor left the business and in 1937 started his own photo store and lab in Gothenburg, Victor Foto.

World War II

During World War II, the Swedish military captured a fully functioning German aerial surveillance camera from a downed German plane. This was probably a Handkammer HK 12.5 / 7x9, which bore the codename GXN.

The Swedish government realised the strategic advantage of developing an aerial camera for their own use, and in the spring of 1940 approached Victor Hasselblad to help create one. In April 1940, Victor Hasselblad established a camera workshop in Gothenburg called Ross AB in a shed at an automobile shop near a junkyard and working in the evenings in cooperation with an auto mechanic from the shop and his brother, began to design the HK7 camera.

By late 1941, the operation had over twenty employees and the Swedish Air Force asked for another camera, one which would have a larger negative and could be permanently mounted to an aircraft; this model was known as the SKa4. Between 1941 and 1945, Hasselblad delivered 342 cameras to the Swedish military.

In 1942, Karl Erik Hasselblad died and Victor took control of the family business. During the war, in addition to the military cameras, Hasselblad produced watch and clock parts, over 95,000 by the war's end.

Post-war

After the war, watch and clock production continued, and other machine work was also carried out, including producing a slide projector and supplying parts for Saab automobiles.

Victor Hasselblad's real ambition, though, was to make high quality civilian cameras. In 1945-1946, the first design drawings and wooden models were made for a camera to be called the Rossex. An internal design competition was held for elements of the camera; one of the winners was Sixton Sason, the designer of the original Saab bodywork.

In 1948, the camera later known as the 1600F was released. The new design was very complex, and many small improvements were needed to create a reliable product; the watchmaking background of many of the designers produced a design which was sophisticated, but more delicate than what was required for a camera. Only around 50 units were produced in 1949, and perhaps 220 in 1950, of what collectors have come to designate the Series One camera. The Series Two versions of the 1600F, perhaps as many as 3300 made from 1950 to 1953, were more reliable but still subject to frequent repairs, with many units having been cannibalized or modified by the factory.

In 1953, a much-improved camera, the 1000F was released. In 1954, they took the 1000F design and mated it to the groundbreaking new 38 mm Biogon lens designed by Dr. Bertele of Zeiss to produce the SWA (Supreme Wide Angle, later changed to Super Wide Angle). Though a specialty product not intended to sell in large numbers, the SWA was an impressive achievement, and derivatives were sold for decades. Hasselblad took their two products to the 1954 Photokina trade show in Germany, and word began to spread.

In December 1954, the 1000F camera received a rave review from the influential American photography magazine, Modern Photography. They put over 500 rolls of film through their test unit, and intentionally dropped it twice, and it continued to function.

The Hasselblad camera comes into its own

1957 was the real turning point for the company. The 1000F was replaced by the 500C. The landmark 500C design formed the basis for Hasselblad's product line for the next forty years, with variants still being produced in small quantities in 2008. It was not until 1960, though, that Hasselblad's cameras became profitable; prior to this point, the company was still being entirely supported by sales of imported photographic supplies, including their distribution of Kodak products.

In 1962, NASA began to use Hasselblad cameras on space flights, and to request design modifications. The first motor-driven camera, the 500EL, appeared in 1965 as a result of NASA requests. While Hasselblad had enjoyed a slowly but steadily growing reputation among professional photographers through the 1950s, the publicity created by NASA's use of Hasselblad products dramatically increased name recognition for the brand.

In 1966, with the increasing success of the camera division, Hasselblad exited the photographic supply and retailing industry, selling Hasselblad Fotografiska AB to Kodak.

1970s onward

In 1976, Victor Hasselblad sold Hasselblad AB to a Swedish investment company, Säfveån AB. When he died in 1978, he left much of his fortune to the Hasselblad Foundation.

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 (now known as "V-System", after Victor) Hasselblad camera.

In 1984, Victor Hasselblad AB went public, with 42.5% of the company being sold on the Swedish stock exchange. The next year, Swedish corporation Incentive AB bought 58.1% of Hasselblad, and in 1991, they acquired the remainder of the shares, taking VHAB back to being a private corporation.

In 1985 Hasselblad established the subsidiary, Hasselblad Electronic Imaging AB, to focus on digital imaging and transmission systems.

In 1996, Hasselblad was sold, with the new owners being UBS, Cinven, and the Hasselblad management.

Fuji, Shriro, Imacon, and the digital age

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.

The H-System marked an essential transition for the company. It dropped the traditional Hasselblad square negative format, instead using 6×4.5 cm film and a new series of lenses. It was intended to be used with digital backs and eventually made as an all-digital camera, and it is largely designed and manufactured by Fuji and sold under their name in Asian markets.

In January 2003 Shriro Group acquired a majority shareholding in Hasselblad. The group had been the distributors for Hasselblad in Japan, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia for over 45 years.

The following year, in August 2004, Shriro Sweden, the holding company of Victor Hasselblad AB, and Swedish subsidiary of Shriro Group, announced the acquisition of high-end scanner and digital cameraback manufacturer, Imacon. The intent of the move was to accelerate Hasselblad’s ambitions in the professional digital photographic sector.

The move was perceived as part of an industry-wide move to respond to the trend away from film to digital. Christian Poulsen, chief executive of Hasselblad after the merger, said, "They finally realized there was no future. It was impossible to keep Hasselblad alive without digital.".^[7]

This move was a key step in the evolution of the medium format camera market. Up until that point, medium format camera makers made cameras and lenses, and separate companies made digital camera back attachments to enable those film cameras to take digital pictures. Most back companies sold products to be used with several different brands of camera. Imacon was one such back manufacturer; by merging with Hasselblad, it became evident that Hasselblad intended to cut other back manufacturers out of access to their new product line, enabling them to seamlessly transition to fully integrated all-digital cameras while the competition was still producing cameras in which the film-based controls and digital capture were not fully combined, and also to retain the profits on the backs, which sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

This has secured their and Fuji's market position, with nearly all of their previous medium format camera competition going through sale (Mamiya, Rollei), closure (Contax, Bronica, Exakta 66), or greatly reduced market presence (Pentax (which was also sold, to Hoya), Kiev Camera), and other medium format digital back makers being faced with accordingly restricted markets.

Hasselblad cameras in space

A closeup view of the Skylab space station taken with a hand-held 70mm Hasselblad camera using a 100mm lens and SO-368 medium speed Ektachrome film.

Several different models of Hasselblad cameras were taken into space, all specially modified for the task.

The Hasselblad cameras were selected by NASA because of their interchangeable lenses and magazines. Modifications were made to permit ease-of-use in cramped conditions and while wearing spacesuits, such as the replacement of the reflex mirror with an eye-level finder.

Modifications by NASA technicians were further refined and incorporated into new models by Hasselblad. For example, development of a 70mm magazine was accelerated to meet the space program.

The first modified (in fact simplified) Hasselblad 500C cameras were used on the last two Project Mercury missions in 1962 and 1963. They continued to be used throughout the Gemini spaceflights in 1965 and 1966.

A general program of reliability and safety was implemented following the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, addressing such issues as reliability and safe operation of electrical equipment in a high-oxygen environment.

EL electric cameras were used for the first time on Apollo 8. A heavily modified 500 EL, the so called Hasselblad Electric Camera (HEC) was used from Apollo 8 on board the spacecraft. Three 500EL cameras were carried on Apollo 11. An even more modified Hasselblad EL Data Camera (HDC), equipped with a special Zeiss 5.6/60 mm Biogon lens and film magazines for 150–200 exposures, was used on the moon surface on the Apollo 11 mission. All following NASA missions also had Hasselblad cameras on board. The photographic equipment and films used on the five subsequent flights were similar to that taken on Apollo 11. On Apollo 15, the 250mm telescopic lens was added. During the Space Shuttle period cameras based on the 500 EL/M, 553 ELX, 205 TCC and 203 FE have been used