The roots of Leica Camera go back to 1849, when 23-year-old Carl Kellner, a talented mechanic, founded his own Optical Institute in the German town of Wetzlar. Lancet Holding BV, the property of Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny, holds a 13.6 percent share in the company. The company ’s largest markets are Germany, with about 34 percent of total sales, and the United States with about 19 percent. Leica products are marketed by over 100 local agents around the world and sold by traditional specialist retailers. Headquartered in Solms, Germany, Leica Camera has three production facilities in Germany and one in Portugal, as well as marketing subsidiaries in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. Major cornerstones of the company ’s high price policy are extraordinary quality, product longevity, and system compatibility. Leica Camera ’s product line includes compact cameras, of both rangefinder and single reflex lens system varieties, as well as lenses, projectors, enlargers, and binocu-lars. The company, which was the first to successfully market a 35-mm compact camera, is best known for its expensive, highly sophisticated cameras. Leica Camera AG is a manufacturer of high quality equipment for photography, photographic reproduction, and observation. NAIC: 333315 Photographic and Photocopying Equipment Manufacturing Incorporated: 1849 as Optical Institute C.