[W&B] Fred Spira, 83, Who Made Photo Gadgets Accessible, Dies - New York Times

[Ralph & Bobbi London]

Below is a link (and the first two sentences) to Fred Spira's  New York  
Times obituary.  I think it will be available for about two weeks  
maximum without a subscription.

I've also  included another obituary by David Goldes, President of  
Basex, taken from that company's weekly email newsletter,   
Basex:TechWatch for the Week Ending September 7, 2007.   Basex' CEO is  
son Jonathan Spira.

Ralph

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/arts/ 
14spira.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

Fred Spira, a photo historian and collector of photographic gadgets who  
is credited with helping standardize modern camera equipment and making  
it accessible to amateurs, died Sept. 2 at his home in Whitestone,  
Queens. He was 83.

Goldes' obituary:

From: Distribution at basex.com (Basex Editorial)
Subject: Basex:TechWatch for the Week Ending September 7, 2007
IN MEMORIAM - S. F. SPIRA

S. F. Spira, born Siegfried Franz Spira in Vienna, Austria in 1924,  
passed away September 2nd.  Everyone knew him as Fred but also as the  
founder and CEO of Spiratone, a company that started out as a small  
photographic laboratory in the 1940s and grew to become the largest  
supplier of photographic accessories in the U.S. by the 1980s.

Fred was the father of Basex' CEO Jonathan Spira.  As a trusted advisor  
at Basex, he was always the voice of reason.
Fred was the retired founder and CEO of Spiratone, until the late  
1980s.  He was also an eminent photo-historian and created The Spira  
Collection, which many experts considered to be one of the world's  
finest collections of photography-related items.  He was the principal  
author (along with Jonathan as co-author) of The History of  
Photography, published by Aperture, and which the New York Times named  
a best book of the year in 2001.
Spira left Vienna  with the Kindertransport, having placed an advert in  
the Manchester Guardian stating "Austrian boy, age 14, with affidavit  
for America, needs temporary home in England."  Although he left his  
parents behind in Vienna, they were reunited a year later and started a  
new life in the United States.  His first accomplishment was graduating  
from high school in New York as the class valedictorian.

The family had gone from a very comfortable existence in Vienna, where  
his father had been a bank executive and later the owner of a camera  
shop, to almost nothing.  To survive, they started a small  
photo-finishing laboratory operating out of their apartment.  This grew  
into a fairly substantial business (the lab's customers included many  
Austrian emigrés, including members of the Habsburg family, the former  
rulers of Austria).  In the late 1940s, Fred saw opportunity with the  
Japanese and became one of the first if not the first to open up the  
U.S. market to quality Japanese photographic goods.
Among his many innovations, he invented the first Through-the-Lens  
(TTL) metering system for still cameras and is credited with many other  
innovations in filters, lighting, darkroom, and other areas of  
photography.  He also created the concept of interchangeable lens  
systems, which allowed one lens to work with multiple cameras such as  
Canon and Nikon, simply by changing an adapter mount.
John Durniak, former picture editor of the New York Times and Time  
magazine among his many titles, had written the following about Fred in  
a feature article in the 1980s:
Henry Ford did not invent the automobile and Fred Spira did not invent  
photography, yet, both these men have had almost as much influence on  
their respective fields as the original inventors.  What Ford did to  
our economy and culture with the concepts behind the Model A and Model  
T, Spira has done to photography with his accessory lenses, close-up  
attachments and processing machines.

The funeral service, held this past Tuesday, was longer than usual  
because of the number of people who eulogized Fred.  In addition to a  
touching eulogy by Rabbi Ezra Finkelstein (who had worked for Modern  
Photography briefly as a free-lance writer before going to the  
Seminary), Jonathan and his brother Greg spoke, as did our v.p. and  
editorial director Basilio Alferow, who prior to his life at Basex, was  
vice president of R&D under Fred at Spiratone.  The photographic  
industry was represented by Herbert Keppler, who ran both Modern  
Photography and, more recently, Popular Photography, and Bernie Danis,  
who started working for Fred in 1946 and ended up as a lifelong friend  
and colleague at Spiratone.  

Several people, Michael Pritchard, Managing Director of Christie's, a  
friend of Fred's since 1986, where distance precluded their attendance  
e-mailed in brief eulogies which were read at the service,

I'll close with an excerpt from comments by Joe Pompeo, a former  
manager at Spiratone.

"Fred left his mark on me and on society.
 
Fred was always fair, patient and helpful.
 
Working for Fred remains one of my most memorable experiences.
 
Fred inspired me and I learned so much, especially common sense and  
modesty.
 
Today those wonder years working with SFS remain my fondest memories.  
 Hardly a day goes by I don't flash back to Flushing and hear Fred's  
words of advice.  In my mind Fred will always be that hyper man in the  
gray business suit huddled behind his typewriter knocking off letter  
after letter."

-David M. Goldes