Identity area
Type of entity
Corporate body
Authorized form of name
FED
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
The FED is a Soviet rangefinder camera, mass-produced from 1934 until around 1996, and also the name of the factory that made it. The factory emerged from the small workshops of the Children's labour commune named after Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (the acronym of which gave name to the factory and its products) in December 1927 in Kharkiv (Soviet Ukraine, now Ukraine). Initially the factory was managed by the head of the commune Anton Makarenko, and produced simple electrical machinery (drills). In 1932 the new managing director of the factory – A.S. Bronevoy (Russian: А.С. Броневой) – came up with the idea to produce a copy of Leica Camera.
Large-scale production began in 1934, and in the same year the factory was put under NKVD control. Production continued until 1941, when German forces destroyed the factory, and resumed in 1946.