Way, way back, in 1912, Johan Steenberg, a Dutchman, living in Dresden, Germany, started Ihagee to make cameras. His firm would become pivotal in the rise of SLRs. It all started in 1932 with the introduction of their ‘Roll-Paff Reflex, a simple box style, SLR which took twelve 6 x 6 photos on a roll of 120 film.
The company remained little known outside Europe until 1933, when they developed their Exakta VP (for Vest Pocket), a much smaller SLR with a waist-level finder which took eight 4 x 6.5 cm images on 127 Roll film. It was created by a brilliant young designer, Karl Nüchterlein, who was just 29 years old and it was a market success, The 1935 version was the first SLR to have flash synchronization for the newly-developed flashbulbs.
