The Penti was manufactured in Germany from the East by Welta since the late 50s was available with a white body, red, black or blue. The camera was developed by Walter Henning in the company VEB Zeiss Icon since 1956 and in April 1958 went into production as Welta Orix in factory VEB Welta Kamera Werke (renamed VEB Prüfgerätewerk Medingen in 1960) because your company matrix, VEB Zeiss Ikon, lacked sufficient production capacity. However, the name Orix quickly changed to Penti - in about a year [1] and production Welta continued until the end of 1961 [2] In 1962 production was transferred to the Object 1 plant VEB Kamera- und Kinowerke Dresden (VEB KKWD, old factory Ica). A new exposure meter Penti II version was developed there, possibly made since the early 60s to 1977 [3] Object 10 factory in Helfenberg. A simpler variant of the Penti II (without measurement) Penti I, also manufactured there, but was discontinued before 1966 [4]. Between 1959 and 1977 some 800 000 cameras [5] were made. Together with the camera, the company Agfa Wolfen VEB filmfabrik renewed production of Agfa Karat prewar standard 35 mm film fast load which greatly simplifies the maintenance of the camera. Agfa Karat used two identical cartridges, one charged and the other empty. The film feed system shifted the film through the plane of the image from one cartridge to another, image by image. From 1964, when the name of the company Agfa East Germany changed from Agfa to ORWO, the type of film was renamed ORWO Penti (ORWO-Penti-Patrone) and this name was used until the late 1960s, when developed a new standard, Schnelladekassette (cassette loading speed) based on Penti cassettes.
