Now while these things may sound somewhat trivial today, in 1914 advanced lenses were a massive deal. This was the first great war fought at long distances. Advances in ballistics & weaponry meant ranges went up to 40,000 to 60,000 yards. And those with the best lenses had the best chance of hitting their targets. They had an enormous advantage.
And as WWI began, there was no doubting who had the upper hand: Germany.
Germany totally dominated world production of precision optics via its company Zeiss (making lenses) and Schott (making the glass going into those lenses).
Britain, on the other hand, was reliant on Germany for around two thirds of its optics. So when the war began and those supplies were suddenly shut off, the UK was left facing a “glass famine”.
In the opening months of the war, British troops were killed in terrifying numbers by German snipers (with Zeiss scopes). British soldiers, meanwhile, were being sent out to the trenches without any binoculars. It fast became an emergency.
There was a public appeal and newspaper campaigns encouraging people to donate their binoculars, opera glasses, anything, to troops heading to the front. Even the King & Queen donated some of theirs. But it wasn’t enough.
Which brings us back to the spy sent to Switzerland. His mission was to find a way of buying binoculars off the Germans; to buy a technology off the enemy to use to kill the enemy.
[...]
The only thing crazier than this proposal… was that the Germans actually said yes. They were not just willing but seemed to bend over backwards to provide binoculars (to be used to help kill their troops). Here’s the passage from the history of the Ministry of Munitions:
Why were they willing to provide this advanced military technology to their deadly enemy? Because in much the same way as the UK was desperately short of glass lenses, Germany was desperately short of rubber for their tyres and engine fan belts. And the UK controlled much of the global supply of rubber via her colonies.
So, for a period the two great powers were so desperate for raw materials they were willing to suspend the normal conventions of warfare. Rubber for glass.
[...]
Making glass (melting sand!) was not easy. But in the 17th and 18th centuries the UK had one of the most advanced optical research sectors in the world. Everyone was carrying out research into glass.
And British lenses were, by most accounts, far better, clearer and more precise than their Bohemian counterparts. The glass sector became one of the most profitable and important in the UK economy. Foreign powers routinely sent spies to try to plunder its secrets. So what went wrong?
The picture above is a clue. In the 18th and then 19th century there was a sequence of taxes on glass. Most famous of all is the window tax of the 18th century which, in fairness, wasn’t primarily a tax on glass. It was mostly a tax on housing (the more windows, the more you paid - hence why people bricked in windows).
But it was the beginning of a fiscal assault on the glass sector. The crystal goose was to be plucked. The window tax was followed up by further taxes on glass producers and on glass consumers. There were duties and other charges, many of them based on the weight of glass.
And the consequence was that the sector retrenched. Businesses failed to invest in new types of glass. Domestic glass became too expensive.
[...]
Even at this point, policymakers in Germany were doing quite the opposite, providing support and tax breaks for their glassmakers (and other scientists). With the help of what would today be called “industrial strategy”, Jena in Thuringia was picked as a centre for technical glassmaking. An enterprising scientist, Otto Schott, came up with clever new glass mixes, including borosilicate glass and clever glasses which used lithium to become clearer and more stable.
Carl Zeiss then turned Schott’s glass into amazing lenses. An industrial sector was born; Jena quickly came to dominate lensmaking. Part of that was down to the genius of these men but partly it came down to the economic environment which was supportive even as the environment in the UK was not.
[...]
But as I say, the most interesting thing wasn't so much that deal, but what happened next. The official account says despite the Germans saying yes, the British never took them up on the offer. Some historians have argued the lenses were delivered. But let’s look at the data…
Here’s a chart I dug out of the UK National Archives while researching Material World. It shows you optical glass supplies to the UK. And look: the standout thing is how quickly UK domestic production rose.
The UK didn’t need German glass by the time that deal was done because it was producing plenty by then, and output was rising fast. UK factories had swung into action. They turned around the deficit so quickly that by the end of the war they were producing more than they needed - enough to supply their allies.
From the article:
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]