Hopefully, John Barsness can answer this. While reading a couple guys on here going back and forth as to where glass is made for Zeiss, Swarovski and Schmidt-Bender and probably NightForce, was wondering if you could shed some light on this. Other than S-B, doesn't most come from Japan[Nikor?]. Thanks.
I have a friend who is a renowned engineer in the electro-optical/laser field. This gentleman deals in huge dollar amounts with all of the major glass producers worldwide and is intimately familiar with their procurement supply chains. When I asked him this question as regards sports optics he replied that it is common knowledge that all optics companies acquire glass from various sources. He cited the "Leica Handbook", which he described as Leica's supply specification manual, as listing supply from Schott Jena, Mainz and Singapore; Corning USA and France; Hoya Japan and Ohara Japan. He also says the Schott Catalog cites supply from both Hoya and Ohara.
This is hearsay of course, albeit from a source I very much respect so I tried to verify it on the internet and the only absolute concrete evidence I found is from some of the annual reports of the companies above. Hoya for instance shows their largest sales outside of Japan as being from Germany.
