Lens history ?!!

In the south-west corner of the streets Aobadori Avenues and Haigashi Ichibanciodori Avenues, in Sendai, Japan, there was, and it may be still is, a small photo shop. It was selling new, but most of all used cameras and lenses. In the opposite corner there was a bakery selling Danish pastry, yeas it is true -- in Japan. The pastry smelled wonderfully and reminded me of south Scandinavia, where I live. I stopped at both the shops many times, on my way to work at the university, and admired the show of old cameras and the taste of the Danish.

The photo shop was small and simple, but exhibited advanced Japanese and European cameras. At that time I was interested in the rangefinder camera Canon 7 and the shop had several. I talked to the owner of the shop many times, yeas he spoke good English. I asked finally if it was possible to find the CANON 50mm f/0.95 lens in good shape. He promised to find me one. He told me he was especially proud of that lens, because he was part of its construction. At that time, in the 50-ties, he was engineer at Canon and constructed the mechanism of equal distance between the aperture stops 0.9--1,4--2--2,4-- . It was the first lens of Canon with that property, according to the man in the shop; I do not know his name. Take a look at some of the older lenses at the Canon museum; like the Serenar 35mm f/2.8 I from 1951, and you can see that it is not equal distance between the f-stops.

After more than a year, I was told through a friend, that the lens, and a Canon 7s II (only 4000 were manufactured 1967-68) to go with it, was ready for delivery. How much?? – about $1000 for it all.

I have always wondered why there has been no tests (probably the only one missed), on the net, of all the 1.0 lenses (three out there? -- two Canon and one Leitz).