Ross (optics)

The year after his death in 1859, his son-in-law John Henry Dallmeyer left the firm to establish his own optical company and the company was run by Ross's son, Thomas, and became known as Ross & Co. By the 1890s it was also making Zeiss and Goerz lenses under licence for sale in the UK and the British Empire.

Ross patented a wide-angle lens design and Zeiss took this further to produce their EWA Protars.

Before World War 1, Ross and Zeiss worked quite closely together, but at the outbreak of War the British Government put Ross in control of the newly opened Carl Zeiss binocular and optical factory in Mill Hill, London.

A range of Ross Standard Reflex cameras is listed with an illustration in the 1935 British Journal Photographic Almanac, the sizes ranged from 3+1⁄2 by 2+1⁄2 inches (89 mm × 64 mm) up to half plate.

[quantify] During WWI and WWII Ross Limited produced pattern 373 and 373B "Officer of the Watch" telescopes for the Royal Navy.