PENTAX Corporation (before 2000 known as Asahi Optical Joint Stock Co.) was founded in 1919.
In 1952 they manufactured first Japanese 35mm SLR camera with a cloth curtain focal plain shutter and shutter speeds range from 1/20 to 1/500 sec. It was called Asahiflex I. But even more revolutionary was their Asahiflex II (1954), having has the world's first instant return mirror system. Before that a photographer had to manually bring down mirror after having taken a picture. This system made rapid shooting possible with a SLR.
In 1957 Asahi Optical Joint Stock Co. carried out another coup - they used of a pentaprism in the viewfinder of the Asahi Pentax SLR. The pentaprism made eye-level viewing possible and provided correct images. It was also the first time that the name Pentax was used on a camera. The very name, as you might have guessed, is derived from “PENTAprism reflex.”
Fancy that Pentax were so popular & successful with their cameras that in 1979 NASA chose Pentax Auto 110 for space photography!
The year 1984 is marked by PENTAX PC35AF/Sports35 with which the company broke into compact photo cameras market. And as soon as in 1986 the world’s first compact zoom camera was launched - PENTAX Zoom70.
In 1997 Pentax penetrated digital cameras market and 3 year later began collaboration with Hewlett-Packard in the sphere of digital cameras development. Already in 2003 Pentax unleashed their first Digital SLR. The professional DSLR cameras line-up Pentax-K appeared now long ago, in 2006.
Pentax doesn’t offend amateur shooters either. Alongside with point-and-shoots it produced compacts with manual controls and image stabilization (e.g. Optio A40)
It’s worth mentioning that apart from photo equipment Pentax Corporation operates in such spheres as medicine, high-precision optics, communication facilities, land surveying and ophthalmology.
