Carl Zeiss
Encyclopedia
Lens (optics)
A lens is an optical device with perfect or approximate axial symmetry which transmits and refracts light, converging or diverging the beam. A simple lens consists of a single optical element...
manufacturing that have aided the modern production of lenses. Raised in Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, he became a notable lens maker in the 1840s when he created high quality lenses that were "wide open", or in other words, had a very large aperture
Aperture
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. The aperture determines how collimated the admitted rays are,...
range that allowed for very bright images. He did this in the city of Jena
Jena
Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...
at a self opened workshop, where he started his lens making career. At first his lenses were only used in the production of microscope
Microscope
A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy...
s, but when camera
Camera
A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...
s were invented, his company began manufacturing high quality lenses for cameras.
Youth
Zeiss began his life in pre-imperial Germany where he went to a grammar schoolGrammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...
, and undertook apprenticeship
Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...
under Dr. Friedrich Körner, mechanic and supplier to the court. He later attended lectures in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, experimental physics
Experimental physics
Within the field of physics, experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines concerned with the observation of physical phenomena in order to gather data about the universe...
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, mineralogy
Mineralogy
Mineralogy is the study of chemistry, crystal structure, and physical properties of minerals. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.-History:Early writing...
and optics
Optics
Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...
at the University of Jena. After seven years he opened a small workshop with hardly any tools. He made many lenses but had little recognition until 1847 when he hired his second and third apprentice.
Life
In 1847 Carl Zeiss started making microscopes full-time. His first innovationInnovation
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society...
was making simpler microscopes that only used one lens and were therefore only intended for dissecting work. He sold around 23 of them in his first year of production. He soon decided that he needed a new challenge so he began making compound microscopes. He first created the Stand I which went to market in 1857.
In 1861 he was awarded a gold medal at the Thuringian Industrial Exhibition for his designs. They were considered to be among the best scientific instruments in Germany. By this point he had about 20 people working under him with his business still growing. In 1866 the Zeiss workshop sold their 1,000th microscope.
In 1872 he joined up with physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Ernst Abbe. Their combined efforts lead to the discovery of the Abbe sine condition
Abbe sine condition
The Abbe sine condition is a condition that must be fulfilled by a lens or other optical system in order for it to produce sharp images of off-axis as well as on-axis objects...
. Theoretically, the Abbe sine condition could greatly improve how well lenses could be made. However, a form of glass strong enough to fully test the theory did not exist at the time. Abbe then met Otto Schott
Otto Schott
Friedrich Otto Schott was a German chemist, glass technologist, and the inventor of borosilicate glass. He was the son of a window glass maker, Simon Schott. From 1870 to 1873 Schott studied chemical technology at the technical college in Aachen and at the universities of Würzburg and Leipzig...
, a 30 year old glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...
chemist
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
who had just received his doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
. They collaborated and soon produced a new type of glass in 1886 that could fully use the Abbe sine condition. This new type of glass made possible a new class of microscope objective: the apochromatic (often abbreviated 'apo'). Zeiss used water immersion to form a compensating
Compensation
Compensation can refer to:*Financial compensation, various meanings*Compensation , various advantages a player has in exchange for a disadvantage*Compensation *Compensation , by Ralph Waldo Emerson...
eyepiece
Eyepiece
An eyepiece, or ocular lens, is a type of lens that is attached to a variety of optical devices such as telescopes and microscopes. It is so named because it is usually the lens that is closest to the eye when someone looks through the device. The objective lens or mirror collects light and brings...
which produced images with little or no color
Color
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
distortion
Distortion
A distortion is the alteration of the original shape of an object, image, sound, waveform or other form of information or representation. Distortion is usually unwanted, and often many methods are employed to minimize it in practice...
.
His son had entered the business with him but retired soon after Carl Zeiss's death of natural causes on 3 December 1888. The business was incorporated as the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung
Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung
The Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung , located in Heidenheim an der Brenz and Jena, Germany, is the sole shareholder of the two companies Carl Zeiss AG and Schott AG. It was founded by Ernst Abbe and named after his long-term partner Carl Zeiss...
in 1889. It gained an international reputation for the manufacture of optical instruments of all kinds, and remains in business to this day.
Publications
- Auerbach, Das Zeisswerk und die Carl Zeiss-Stiftung in Jena (third edition, Jena, 1907)
See also
- Calculation of glass propertiesCalculation of glass propertiesThe calculation of glass properties is used to predict glass properties of interest or glass behavior under certain conditions without experimental investigation, based on past data and experience, with the intention to save time, material, financial, and environmental resources, or to gain...
- a significant contribution to the success of the companies Zeiss and Schott - Optical Museum JenaOptical Museum JenaThe Optical Museum Jena is a scientific-technological museum.The Optical Museum Jena shows optical instruments from eight centuries. It gives a technical and cultural-historical survey of the development of optical instruments...