It has been said that without Carl Zeiss and his
inventions, we would not really know what the world looks like. And anyone who
has ever has the chance of handling or using a digital camera or smartphone fitted
with a Zeiss lens knows that this is true.
Carl Zeiss, born on 11 September 1816 and died on 3 December 1888, was a
German manufacturer of optical instruments known for the company he
founded, Carl Zeiss Jena, now
known as Carl Zeiss AG. Brought
up in Weimar, Germany, he became an outstanding lens-maker in the
1840s when he produced expert lenses that had an exceptionally large aperture range
which allowed for extremely bright images. This has become somewhat of a
distinguishing feature in Carl Zeiss lenses as the images they capture are most
often crystal clear and vividly detailed.
Zeiss worked in the university town of Jena, from
which he got the original name of his company, at a workshop he set up
himself where he commenced his lens-making vocation. His lenses were initially used
solely in the production of microscopes but his company later began
manufacturing their high-quality lenses when cameras were invented.
By the time Zeiss began creating microscopes for
scientists in 1846, glass lenses were an accepted way of magnification, but it
was a time-consuming, arduous and costly procedure using trial and error on
each piece of glass. In his first year, he only sold 23 microscopes. But subsequently,
it was the contribution Zeiss made to lens-manufacturing over 170 years
ago that have facilitated the modern production of many lenses today.
The Carl Zeiss lens is most commonly known as a
feature in Nokia smartphones, which is a major selling point for many of the
brand’s products. However, the Carl Zeiss Master Prime umbrella of lenses,
which merge an exceptionally high speed with brilliant image sharpness, perfect
contrast, and true colour, has also set new standards in cinematography. These
lenses have been used for numerous Academy Award-winning films, including “The
Social Network”, “The Fighter”, and “The King’s Speech”. Even “The Lord of the
Rings” trilogy, which won a total of 17 Oscars, was shot with a Carl Zeiss
lens. And famed film director Stanley Kubrick also used a customized Zeiss lens,
originally intended for NASA space missions, to shoot his film “Barry Lyndon”.
Carl Zeiss’s legacy now lives on through the lenses we
take for granted, and are often unaware of, in cameras, smartphones, surgical
equipment, and microscopes with the accuracy, precision and peak image quality
that he strived to capture throughout his career being produced every single
time.
