Victor Hasselblad AB is a Swedish manufacturer of medium format cameras, photographic equipment and image scanners based in Gothenburg, Sweden. The company originally became known for its classic analog medium-format cameras that used a waist-level viewfinder. Perhaps the most famous use of the Hasselblad camera was during the Apollo program missions when the first humans landed on the Moon. Almost all of the still photographs taken during these missions used modified Hasselblad cameras. In 2016, Hasselblad introduced the world's first digital compact mirrorless medium-format camera, the X1D-50c, changing the portability of medium-format photography. Hasselblad produces about 10,000 cameras a year from a small three-storey building.[3]
The company was established in 1841 in Gothenburg, Sweden, by Fritz Wiktor Hasselblad, as a trading company, F. W. Hasselblad and Co. The founder's son, Arvid Viktor Hasselblad, was interested in photography and started the photographic division of the company. Hasselblad's corporate website quotes him as saying, "I certainly don't think that we will earn much money on this, but at least it will allow us to take pictures for free."[4]
In 1877, Arvid Hasselblad commissioned the construction of Hasselblad's long-time headquarters building, in use until 2002.[5] While on honeymoon, Arvid Hasselblad met George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak. In 1888, Hasselblad became the sole Swedish distributor of Eastman's products. The business was so successful that in 1908, the photographic operations were spun off into their own corporation, Fotografiska AB. Operations included a nationwide network of shops and photo labs. Management of the company eventually passed to Karl Erik Hasselblad, Arvid's son (grandson of founder F. W.). Karl Erik wanted his son, Victor Hasselblad, to have a wide understanding of the camera business, and sent him to Dresden, Germany, then the world center of the optics industry, at age 18 (c. 1924).
Victor spent the next several years studying and working in various photography related endeavors in Europe and the US, including Rochester, New York, with George Eastman, before returning to work at the family business. Due to disputes within the family, particularly with his father, Victor left the business and in 1937 started his own photo store and lab in Gothenburg, Victor Foto.
During World War II, the Swedish military captured a fully functioning German aerial surveillance camera from a downed German plane. This was probably a Handkammer HK 12.5 cm/7x9, which bore the codename GXN and the military account number Fl.38510.
The Swedish government realised the strategic advantage of developing an aerial camera for their own use, and in the spring of 1940 approached Victor Hasselblad to help create one. In April 1940, Victor Hasselblad established a camera workshop in Gothenburg called Ross AB in a shed at an automobile shop, working in the evenings in cooperation with a mechanic from the shop and his brother, and began designing the HK7 camera.