While we were at the ZEISS HQ at Oberkochen, the brand also took us through a quick guided tour through its Museum of Optics. The exhibits involve just about all of the advancements in optics tech following Carl Zeiss and his involvement in precision optics, with lenses for items ranging from microscopes to telescopes, involving fields from photography to medical applications.
We were guided through the tour by Bernd Presser, who had spent over three decades doing the job. We also got the privilege, depending on one’s perspective, to be the last group that he guides through the museum.
The first stop is the largest object in the exhibit, the planetarium projector. This is one of the older versions of the thing, with Presser showing us an image of what a modern version of it looks like.
Next is the microscope, with one of the earlier models shown on its own pedestal, with what was called the equation of resolution. On the internet, you can find this same formula identified as the Abbe diffraction limit for microscopes.
This would lead to the history of microscopes, but with the first entry predating the one made by Zeiss. This comes in the form of what was called the flea microscope, made by Dutch entrepreneur Antoni van Leeuwenhoek – sometimes spelt as Antony or Antonie. Through his own lens grinding hobby, he was able to create a handheld microscope that not only be held up to the eye, but also achieved 270x magnification and at a far greater resolution than multi-lens systems at the time. As this had enough magnification to observe bacteria, he would later be known as the father of microbiology.
Naturally, you’d expect a section in the museum dedicated to camera lenses. And as you’d expect from the company’s collaboration with vivo, there’s an X100 Ultra as part of this exhibit. To quickly recap, the phone is the highest offering from the brand’s current generation flagship line-up, featuring a 6.78-inch AMOLED QHD+ 120Hz curved display, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, 5,500mAh battery with 80W fast charging support, and a main camera setup comprising 50MP primary, 50MP wide-angle, and a 200MP periscope telephoto. Unfortunately, this particular variant is not available for the local market.
Other exhibits include all other sorts of products with lenses, from glasses to monocular telescopes and binoculars. There’s even a section about cataract treatment.
And that concludes the ZEISS Museum of Optics tour that was given to us. Depending on what sort of shows you’ve watched before, you may have an increased interest in specific parts of the museum than others, like I did. Who knows, it may even increase your enjoyment of future shows you watch that are relevant to the topic of optics.
Tour courtesy of vivo and ZEISS.
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