His small lens business rose to global presence

Norman Wilson Edmund, 95, founder of Edmund Scientific in Barrington, Camden County, died Monday, Jan. 16, at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

In 1942, Mr. Edmund began a mail-order business selling surplus and chipped lenses to camera hobbyists from a card table at his apartment in Oaklyn.

Seventy years later, his company, now called Edmund Optics, mails out 2.5 million catalogs to customers all over the world. Its optical products are used in a variety of applications, including DNA sequencing, retinal eye scanning, and high-speed factory automation.

The company has provided optical components for gun sights, night-vision equipment, drones, and military gear used by soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Mr. Edmund's son, Robert, the firm's president.

Norman Wilson Edmund graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden and then worked as a junior accountant while attending the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania at night.

In 1939, a few days after graduating, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. During a long convalescence in Lakeland Sanatorium in Camden County, he renewed his interest in photography - a hobby from his Eagle Scout days. He bought a set of chipped lenses and converted them into a supplementary lens for his own camera.

He started his mail-order business after recovering. By the time he built a plant in Barrington in 1948, he had 30 garages filled with surplus optical merchandise.

He would tell people he was not a scientist, his daughter, Joan Husted, said. But he wrote simple how-to booklets for his customers and supplied them with instructions to build film projectors, cameras, telescopes, and other items, all with lenses supplied by his firm.

As available surplus parts were exhausted, Mr. Edmund built a machine shop in Barrington to manufacture duplicates.

He was excited in 1957 when the Russians launched the first space satellite, Sputnik I, because he knew this would mean new business, his daughter said.

After the launch, the U.S. government contracted with Edmund Scientific to produce satellite-spotting telescopes used at official observation stations around the country to sight the Russian satellite and future U.S. satellites.