- For the company with the same name, see Zeiss.
Carl Zeiss in middle age.
Carl Zeiss (September 11, 1816 – December 3, 1888) was an optician commonly
known for the company he founded, Zeiss. Zeiss himself also made a few contributions to
lens manufacturing that have aided the modern production of lenses. Raised in
Weimar, Germany, 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 range that allowed for very clear images. He did this in the city of
Jena at a self opened workshop, where he started his lens making career. At first his lenses were
only used in the production of microscopes but when cameras
were invented, his company (Zeiss) began manufacturing high quality lenses for cameras. He died in
Jena.
Youth
Zeiss began his life in pre-imperial Germany where he went to a grammar school, and undertook apprenticeship under Dr.
Friedrich Körne, mechanic and supplier to the court. He later
attended lectures in math, experimental physics,
anthropology, mineralogy and optics at Jena University. After seven years he
opened a small workshop by himself with hardly any tools. He made many lenses but had little recognition until 1847 when he hired his first apprentice. The very same year his former master, Dr. Körne died, inspiring Zeiss to
devote his life to working in the area of microscopes.
Carl Zeiss
Life
Carl Zeiss in late middle age.
In 1847 Carl Zeiss started making microscopes full-time. His
first innovation 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 Thuringain 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 all the time. In
1866 the Zeiss workshop sold their 1000th microscope. He then continued on for a few years, and assumed he had reached his fullest potential, but he
met Dr. Ernst Abbe, a physicist that he joined up
with in 1872. Their combined efforts lead to the discovery of the Abbe sine condition.
During this period, Zeiss made his best lenses that he ever had up to this point. Theoretically, the Abbe sine condition could greatly improve just how good lens quality could get. The problem was,
there wasn't a type of glass that was strong enough to fully test the theory out.
Luckily, Dr. Ernst Abbe soon met Otto Schott, a 30 year old glass chemist who had just received his doctorate. They collaborated and soon produced a new type glass in 1886 that
could fully use the Abbe sine condition. This new type of glass paved the way for a
new class of microscope objective: the apochromatic (often abbreviated 'apo'). Zeiss used
water immersion to form a compensating eyepiece which produced
images with little or no color distortion.
That was what Zeiss had tried to make during his whole life and it was quite timely that he
achieved his goal when he did. A mere two years after he made his amazing new microscope, he
died of natural causes on December 3, 1888.
His son had entered the business with him, but retired soon after Carl Zeiss's death. The business was incorporated as the
Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung in 1889, and it gained an international reputation for the manufacture of
optical instruments of all kinds.
Publications
- Auerbach, Das Zeisswerk und die Karl Zeiss-Stiftung in Jena (third edition, Jena, 1907)
External links
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