The application states that the name Vivitar was first used in commerce in November of 1963. Ponder & Best filed for the Vivitar trademark on 21 September, 1965.
The most well known variant is "Vivitar Series 1" a badge created for the highest end equipment (though after the 2008 dissolution of the company, the "Vivitar Series 1" label began to be used interchangeably with the plain "Vivitar" badging). A small number of lenses custom-developed for specific customers were labelled "Vivitar Professional", occasionally special edition equipment bore labels such as "Vivitar RL Edition", "Vivitar SMS", or "Vivitar DL". While the majority equipment bore the "Vivitar" name alone, several variants were also used over the years: the earliest lenses bear the label "P & B Vivitar". But in 1964, after losing Rollei and Olympus distribution rights, Ponder & Best decided to come up with their own brand and rebadge the equipment they sold. Initially, Ponder & Best pursued relationships with major camera equipment manufacturers including Mamiya, Olympus, Rollei, Voightlander, Sawyers, Petri and others, becoming the United States distributor for companies in Japan and Germany. The buildings at these two location no longer exist, only a vacant lot remains as of 2012. Advertising from November 1949 indicates P&B moved or expanded to an adjacent location at 1230 S. In the 1940s through at least 1946, Ponder & Best was located at 1015 S. Best wrote invoices from the back seat while Ponder acted as the saleman and retrieved merchandise from the trunk.
The pair started out selling photographic equipment from a 1936 Oldsmobile. Ponder and Best fled to the United States from Germany after Hitler rose to power. Originally founded as Ponder & Best, Inc., the company was established in Santa Monica, California in 1938 as a distributor of photographic products by the German immigrants Max Ponder (b.
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