Long Grind

Most of the moving images which U. S. cinemaudiences goggle at are projected through Bausch & Lomb lenses. Bausch & Lomb's 17,000 other products include spectacles, microscopes (15,000 a year), gun sights and range finders for the U. S. Army & Navy, binoculars, reading glasses, saccharimeters, spectroscopes.

Although American Optical Co. makes more spectacles, Spencer Lens Co. makes microscopes and Eastman Kodak Co. grinds its own camera lenses, Bausch & Lomb is the only U. S. commercial maker of scientific precision glass. So important is this fact to the U. S. Navy Department that its agents are constantly on watch to keep the general public out of Bausch & Lomb's Rochester plant. Last week, however, the general public was invited to come in, not to Bausch & Lomb's plant but to its ownership.

In 1853, after a buzz saw cut off the fingers of a German-born wood turner named John Jacob Bausch, he went tc work selling spectacles in partnership with one Henry Lomb. When Founder Bausch'< son, Edward, learned to fashion microscopes, and sell them, too, Bausch & Lomb began to prosper. Smart Edward Bausch established contacts with the famed German firm of Carl Zeiss in 1890 and before long Bausch & Lomb was using Zeiss patents with exclusive rights to the U. S. market. Shortly thereafter Zeiss bought one-fifth of Bausch & Lomb stock and warmed by increasing royalties from Rochester, began schooling Bausch & Lomb technicians in the laboratory in Germany.

The schooling ended when the U. S. entered the World War. Repurchasing its stock from Zeiss, Bausch & Lomb tackled a job no other U. S. concern has ever attempted--matching German precision in making optical instruments. Today, with some 4,000 workers and a select inner circle of German-trained craftsmen, the Rochester lensmakers turn out lenses ground accurate to a millionth of an inch, at a profit of about a million dollars a year. Since 1926 when Founder J. J. Bausch died, the company has been headed by Son Edward, chairman of the board, now 83 and still active enough to enjoy bowling. He and numerous relatives have not only run Bausch & Lomb but owned all 40,000 shares of its common stock which was split into two classes. Last week, however, anxious to simplify the stock set-up and retire bank loans, mortgage bonds and all the old preferred stock, Chairman Bausch reclassified the common under one heading and offered 26,000 shares of new preferred and 50,000 shares of common stock to the general public through Stone & Webster and Blodget, Inc. Price per share of the $5 preferred, $100; for the common, $20.

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