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| Inventor and Enhancer of Optical Instruments |
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While an officer in the artillery, Ignazio Porro had already begun to improve geodetic instruments. His inventions helped to facilitate their operation and to increase measuring and reading accuracy. From 1839 onwards, he called his instruments ”tachymeters” and coined the term ”tachymetry”. As J. M. Eder related in 1911, Porro already constructed an asymmetrical camera lens from three elements in 1847 in order to improve the image quality of the lens right to its edge. It was also Porro’s suggestion (ca. 1850) to use tele-lenses to photograph distant buildings. Today, Porro’s name is practically only associated with the prism erecting systems which he invented around 1850 and which attained major importance in the construction of binoculars after his death.
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Tacheometer – today: tachymeter – from Porro from his Paris workshop Institut technomatique. Image courtesy of Museu do IPCC, Lisbon | Phototachymeter or phototheodolite from Salmoiraghi. |
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After completing his military service (1842), Ignazio Porro initially opened a workshop in Turin, and then the Institut technomatique in Paris five years later. In 1861 he returned to Florence where he directed a training course on tachymetry.
In 1863 he was appointed Professor of Surveying by the Technical University of Milan; in the same year he founded the firm Tecnomasio italiano. The firm Filotecnica founded in Milan in 1865 did not flourish until it was managed by Porro’s student and successor Salmoiraghi. Porro himself did not benefit from his inventions during his lifetime.
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