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| Initial Contacts between Uppsala and Jena |
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The ophthalmoscope, invented by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1850, allowed ophthalmologists to look through the pupil into the interior of the living human eye for the first time.
It opened up totally new possibilities for the diagnosis of eye disease and triggered a high level of interest in the construction of ophthalmic instruments. Famous ophthalmologists including A. von Graefe, W.Thorner, W. Stock, L. Köppe and J. W. Nordenson pioneered a new branch of optics – ophthalmic instrument construction.
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Ophthalmoscope devised by H. von Helmholtz,
ca. 1850. | Ernst Abbe (1840–1905) |
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Towards the end of the 19th century, this work was considerably advanced by the scientific achievements of Ernst Abbe, a partner of Carl Zeiss, and by the construction of high precision optical instruments then evolving in the Carl Zeiss factory in Jena. The collaboration of Zeiss with the Swedish ophthalmologist Allvar Gullstrand was of paramount importance here.
Gullstrand’s visit to Jena to discuss with Abbe ”certain ideas on the more exact determination of the theory of optical instruments and their construction” marked the beginning of close cooperation that would later constitute a major milestone in the history of ophthalmic instrument design.
Gullstrand’s ideas – particularly his theory of the eye’s center of rotation – had a groundbreaking effect on the development of eyeglass lenses and optical instruments. It was this theory that allowed Moritz von Rohr, a scientist employed by Carl Zeiss, to compute and design eyeglass lenses that provided the same visual quality over the entire surface.
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