A hernia steered Carl Zeiss away from scholarship and toward the microscope
His two older brothers became academics, but Carl Zeiss had a hernia that forced him to wear a truss, and a desk-bound scholar's life seemed a poor fit. So he trained as a precision mechanic instead, and the small Jena workshop he opened in 1846 became one of the world's great optical firms.
Zeiss was born in Weimar on 11 September 1816, fifth of six surviving children. His father August, from a long line of artisans, was a respected ornamental turner who worked mother-of-pearl, amber and ivory and taught the craft to the crown prince Karl Friedrich, a friendship lasting 40 years; the baby was named after the prince, his godfather. His mother was related to Christiane Vulpius, Goethe's wife. The family name was spelled Zeiß until 1885.
August sent all three sons to the Gymnasium, the route to university. Carl left early but passed a special exam letting him study selected subjects, chiefly natural sciences, and he sat in on lectures at Weimar's technical school. At Easter 1834 he moved to Jena to apprentice with Friedrich Körner, the court mechanic who built and repaired instruments for Goethe. During four years there he also attended one university science or mathematics course per semester.
From 1838 to 1845, the age of steam, he travelled as a journeyman through Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Vienna and Berlin, working for instrument maker Hektor Rössler, the Viennese machinery firm Rollé und Schwilqué and a Berlin machine shop, and passing an exam at Vienna's Polytechnic Institute with distinction. He then chose to return to scientific apparatus and to Jena, drawn by the botanist Matthias Schleiden, who had sparked his interest in optics and stressed the need for better microscopes, and by his brother Eduard, a school director there. To get a residence permit he enrolled as a student in November 1845, building apparatus for professors while navigating the bureaucracy.
His workshop, founded in 1846, still trades as Zeiss. He assembled talented opticians and glassmakers, and his partnership with the physicist Ernst Abbe transformed both the theory and the practical design of microscopes. Extending that work brought in Otto Schott, who revolutionised the making of optical glass. Zeiss died on 3 December 1888.
Source: Carl Zeiss
