LOMO

Categories / Economy/Industry
LOMO (20 Chugunnaya Street), the largest Russian manufacturer and seller of optomechanical and optoelectronic devices. The Company began as the first Russian optomechanical plant founded by the Russian Joint-Stock Company of Optical and Mechanical Manufactures in 1914. It was named the State Optical Plant in 1921 and was known as the State Optomechanical Plant in 1930-62. The Leningrad Group of Optomechanical Enterprises, abbreviated to LOOMP, was established in 1962. It was renamed into the Leningrad Optomechanical Group in 1965, abbreviated as LOMO, in 1965. The plant was named after Vladimir Lenin in 1974. It became a joint-stock company in 1993. LOMO started manufacturing Rus, the first Soviet film projector, in 1918 and Fotokor, the first Soviet mass-market camera in the 1930s, followed by Liliput, Malyutka, Turist, Sport, and Reporter. It also started making Rekord portable projectors in 1932 and astronomic devices and tools in 1934. Executing military orders in 1941-45, the plant set up manufacture of Komsomolets and Lyubitel cameras in 1946 and developed an astrograph for the Pulkovo Observatory in 1947. The plant's Leningrad camera was awarded a gold medal, and the microscopes won the Grand Prix at the World's Fair in Brussels in 1958. Its products were supplied to 15 national enterprises, widely used in metallurgy, mineralogy, biology, semiconductor engineering, and medicine. LOMO made the first telescope in Europe with a 2.6-metre mirror in 1960 and a unique telescope of BTA type with a 6-metre mirror in 1976. The company produced about 700 kinds of products annually in the early 1980s including amateur and professional photo cameras and motion-picture cameras, film and sound equipment, microscopes, gauges, spectral devices, astronomic devices, etc. After LOMO-kompakt, a camera developed at the plant, appeared in 1984, lomography, a new trend in artistic photography, appeared in the 1990s. LOMO became a joint-stock company in 1993. It developed Vizir-4, the first night-viewing device, in 1994 and started manufacturing eye-safe lasers for medicine, instrumentation, and navigation systems in 1997. LOMO's main products include medical equipment, microscopes, observation devices, night-viewers, spectral devices, eye-safe lasers, and special equipment for military, aircraft, marine, and space applications. The company's store is located at 21 Komsomola Street.

Reference: Здесь наш дом: История Ленингр. оптико-механ. об-ния им. В. И. Ленина. Л., 1982; ЛОМО: Сквозь призму времени. СПб., 2002.

T. V. Kovaleva. Lenin (real name Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich
Chugunnaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 20
Komsomola St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 21
Здесь наш дом: История Ленингр. оптико-механ. об-ния им. В. И. Ленина. Л., 1982
ЛОМО. Сквозь призму времени. СПб., 2002 Pulkovo Observatory
1914