Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

If it was just an order for an accessory product, no matter how high the profit was, it would be a small business for Zeiss, and President Cabot would not take it so seriously. In his mind, he did not want to make huge profits on optical objective lenses. No matter how high the profit was from the scale of this product, it would not be as great as getting on the Dongda industrial chain.

That’s right, among the current European entrepreneurs, any company that has the ambition to enter the international market is now trying every means to cling to the thigh of Tokyo University.

Today, Dongda is not only a market for entrepreneurs in Europe, but also the leader of a new system.

Now everyone can see that after John Bull's Rolls-Royce embraced the thigh of Eastern Aviation Industry, it immediately transformed itself into a well-deserved aviation giant in Europe. Now Gaul and Prussia are trying their best to get into Airbus and take a fast train.

Not to mention that so many computer-related companies also started to take off one by one with the help of Tokyo University. There were several computer-related companies in Prussia, and they took off in just one or two years!

It can be said that once you can enter the industrial chain of Dongda University, it will be a great opportunity to take off right away.

Therefore, after Fang Guangqi put forward the new suggestion, Cabot's eyes were particularly fiery.

"Professor Fang, if we can reach a comprehensive cooperation agreement, it will definitely be a different pricing model." Cabot said, "Zeiss is ready to integrate into Dongda's industrial chain. We focus on the optical lens industry and have a strong interest in Dongda's related industries. We hope to bring our best products into Dongda's products."

I had no choice when I couldn't find the opportunity before, but now that the opportunity has come to my doorstep, I will cherish it, Cabot almost gave away a heart.

Hiss, Fang Guangqi took a breath of cold air. This situation was a bit unexpected.

This foreigner is too enthusiastic. Could he have some ulterior motive?

"If we want to jointly develop new optical lens products, can Zeiss accept sharing the intellectual property rights of new products? Of course, in terms of product shipments, we will reasonably consider the market share of both parties." Fang Guangqi tentatively asked.

The main task of this trip to Zeiss is to get a new generation of optical lens system, but if we can form a strong technical cooperation relationship with Zeiss, it will be icing on the cake. Although the optical technology of Dongda is progressing rapidly, it is only a vertical comparison. Compared with the past, if we compare it horizontally with the international level, Dongda's optical technology is not yet top-notch.

To be a top optical technician requires not only long-term training, but also inheritance and talent. Such harsh growth conditions are difficult to meet simultaneously in the optical research of the University of Tokyo.

The area where Tokyo University's optical research can now be at the forefront of the world is in the field of materials. After all, with Ren Zhong's main world procurement information, the research and development of new optical materials is ahead of other majors.

Cabot's eyes narrowed. Fang Guangqi's statement was equivalent to asking for the sharing of Zeiss's technology, because Zeiss currently had a clear leading advantage in optical technology. The two sides jointly developed, which meant that they were preparing to use Zeiss's foundation. This was like eating and serving, which was a bit ill-intentioned.

Cabot's mind flashed with thoughts. It was definitely impossible for him to share his special skills, but if he didn't do anything, he was afraid that today's cooperation would not be able to go deep.

It is really difficult to strike the right balance in this process.

"Professor Fang, in principle, we at Zeiss are willing to work with partners to research advanced optical technologies. However, if some technologies involve the fundamentals of Zeiss, we hope to package them into components and provide products. Professor Fang, please give us your opinion on this aspect."

Cabot said that there is no such thing as handing over core technology, which is the foundation of Zeiss's foothold in the industry.

"I understand, I understand." Fang Guangqi had nothing to be disappointed about. "We believe that the future market for optics will be infinitely broad, and it is even possible that it will be ten or a hundred times larger than the current market. In such a broad market, we will not be competitors, but friendly companies that work together. I believe Dr. Cabot is very clear that it is better to have a few pieces out of ten pieces of cake than a large piece out of one piece of cake."

"Specifically in the application market, in the future, optical lenses will not only be used in professional fields such as astronomy, chemistry, medicine and even military, but we believe that its market in the civilian industry is even broader. For example, in cameras, we believe that with the rapid development of the world economy and the improvement of people's living standards, the era of everyone owning a camera has arrived, and the current camera industry will be a sunrise industry.

In the future, the product scale of the camera industry will be a huge market with sales of millions or even tens of millions. I believe that our in-depth cooperation in this field will be a solid foundation for both of us to move towards glory.”

Fang Guangqi painted a big rosy picture for Cabot, which made Cabot excited but also a little skeptical.

But this time Fang Guangqi did not lie, he heard all this from Ren Zhong.

In 1963 in the main world, the famous camera company Kodak once again launched a revolutionary product series - the Instamatic camera. This series of products made the film box into an independent dark box, and the film could be replaced by opening the camera back cover in any natural environment. It also had an automatic exposure function, making the operation completely "idiot-proof" for consumers.

The result of dethroning photography is that sales volume has risen to the throne. In the second year after the release of this point-and-shoot camera, Instamatic sold 750 million units, setting a record for the highest camera sales!
During the 20s and 60s in the main world, Instamatic sold a total of 70 million units, becoming Kodak's most profitable product line and also creating Kodak's glory. In its peak era, if Kodak's market value is restored based on inflation factors based on 6000, Kodak's market value at its peak was as high as 2017 billion US dollars. At that time, it monopolized 1770% of the domestic film market and 90% of the camera market share.

This point-and-shoot camera is one of the civilian products that Fang Guangqi and his team are currently working hard to research.

Although the quality requirements for the lens of this camera are not that high, considering the quality of the entire product, Fang Guangqi can let Zeiss join this plan and become one of the lens cooperative suppliers, even if their supply origin will most likely have to be transferred from Baden-Württemberg, because the cost control of this point-and-shoot camera will be very strict.

Cabot did not have the foresight of Ren Zhong, but the miracles that the University of Tokyo had created time and again made him inexplicably confident in the University of Tokyo.

"Professor Fang, we are very sincere in conducting all-round cooperation with Southeast University. We are open to cooperation in all fields of application of optical lenses. If Professor Fang has no objection, we at Zeiss are willing to sign a comprehensive cooperation agreement with Southeast University." Cabot stated.

Although he hasn't seen much of the actual stuff yet, Cabot will not miss the chance to join the University of Tokyo.

After all, Todai has created so many miracles in the past few years, whether it is electronic products or computers. Before the products came out, who could have thought that they would create such a large market.

Now that Tokyo University has such great confidence in the camera product market, there is no point in losing anything by jumping on board. After all, they don't have much to lose. At most, they can teach Tokyo University some of its technologies related to ordinary lenses. Although Tokyo University has not fully mastered these technologies, it is not without any foundation. After all, Tokyo University's optical progress in the past few years is obvious to all, and it has even developed very modern technologies such as infrared lenses.

In terms of optical lenses, the foundation of the University of Tokyo is just a little weaker. Professor Fang nodded to Cabot's statement, saying that this step is enough for now. Next, we should continue to work together in actual work.

It is unrealistic to acquire the technology of this top optical company in one go.

The negotiations made a breakthrough progress. Regarding the price, Zeiss also showed flexibility. They agreed to make subsequent quotations for the optical objective system of the lithography machine based on the actual production products plus 50% gross profit.

We are now focusing on developing this optical objective system in accordance with the specifications of the Tokyo University Optical Technology Research Center.

With the help of this world-leading optical company, optical engineers from the University of Tokyo sent a team to work closely with Zeiss at its headquarters to overcome the technical difficulties of the optical objective system of the 2-micron lithography machine.

After several months of research and development, the first generation of 2-micron optical objective lens system was finally developed. After being installed on the L-50 system of the University of Tokyo for testing, stable production of 2-micron lithography was soon achieved.

In this way, the new generation of 2-micron L-100 lithography machine was completed.

For this new optical objective lens system, Zeiss conducted a comprehensive cost test and bargained with the University of Tokyo to confirm a price of US$6. This was an acceptable offer for both parties.

This creates conditions for the large-scale production of the L-100 lithography machine.

On the other hand, the research and development of a new generation of 1-micron optical objective lens system has been restarted, and the next-generation L-200 lithography machine will achieve a more sophisticated processing scale of 1 micron. Corresponding to the chip research of Dongda University, this is to support the production of the next-generation 80386 chip.

Although it is only an improvement of 1 micron, the technical difficulty of this new system is much higher than that of 2 microns. Zeiss is now not sure how long it will take to develop such a demanding new objective system.

Zeiss also tried its best and spent several months to overcome the difficulties and complete the production of the entire 2-micron objective lens system.

Now it needs to be further improved, and even the top masters of Zeiss are a bit overwhelmed.

If it is an optical objective lens system, the research starts from the ultimate aspect of technology and continuously breaks through the limits of optics.

However, when it comes to the development of point-and-shoot camera lenses, everyone is working in a different direction. This time, for mass products, they need to overcome the irreconcilable problem of cost and performance.

According to Dongda, the price of the new generation camera (now code-named Polid) is US$300, but this camera has many functions that seem incredible now.

It allows for easy replacement of film, automatic exposure, and automatic focus, reducing the level of photography experts to a barrier-free photography level where consumers can just point at the screen and press a button to take a photo.

It can be said that before Ren Zhong provided the Liming Optical Technology Research Center with relevant information about this camera and even provided a physical camera for imitation, none of the researchers at Dongda University had any concept or clue about these things.

But with Ren Zhong's cheating function, they can understand the most basic principles of this new product directly by reading the materials.

There are also related product prototypes, so the research and development process does not have too many insurmountable technical barriers, although some technologies are indeed not easy to implement and require these technicians to invest several months of research before progress can be made.

But relatively speaking, the direction of everyone's research is very clear. Research is conducted step by step according to these clear functions. This kind of research is much better than a blind man touching an elephant without knowing the result. Therefore, the progress of this research is much faster than the research on the original time and space of the main world.

In terms of lenses, with the involvement of Zeiss, the imaging quality of this camera is now better guaranteed. However, although Zeiss products are of good quality, their cost is too high compared to the price positioning of this product.

There is no way to directly use existing lenses with this camera.

So in terms of lenses, we now need to customize a high-quality and low-cost lens for the camera, not just a conventional fixed-focus lens. Next, we need to find ways to provide more customized options for this point-and-shoot camera, such as developing some zoom lenses to enhance the expandability of this point-and-shoot camera, so that it can have stronger photo-taking capabilities after replacing the lens, and its performance can be infinitely close to that of some professional cameras.

To some extent, when equipped with the right and better lenses, the capabilities of the Polid camera can be comparable to those of a real professional camera!
Of course, the technical challenges of this goal are even greater.

When Zeiss received these demands, it was both painful and joyful. After they participated in the research and development of the Polid camera and learned about some of the camera's features, they were almost stunned.

If such a camera really came out, they would want to buy one themselves!
For a product like this, although the researchers from Zeiss are not top experts, they are certainly very comprehensive in all aspects. They are constantly optimizing the production process of this lens, because according to the design of Dongda, the annual production capacity must reach more than 500 million. If such lenses are all polished manually, it will definitely not be able to meet the demand, so they are developing machine production equipment with engineers from Dongda.

Machine automation is achieved in most of the processes, and manual intervention is only used in the detection and correction links, so that large-scale mass production of lenses can be achieved.

Zeiss was also very impressed by the level of performance of the University of Tokyo in optical materials. The new synthetic material has better processing characteristics than glass, but in terms of optical properties, it is similar to lenses made of ordinary glass, which is sufficient for ordinary camera lenses.

Only when it comes to customized lens sets does Zeiss consider using glass production, so that customized lenses have stronger light transmittance and can take better photos.

In this way, the optical lens needs of the University of Tokyo received great assistance and supply from the world's top companies, which broadened the horizons of the technical personnel of the University of Tokyo Optical Technology Research Center. Even though they were not allowed to cooperate with Zeiss's top technical experts on some things, they had the opportunity to jointly develop the Polid camera lens throughout the whole process.

This gave Dongda an opportunity to get a close look at Zeiss's R&D experience.

(End of this chapter)