TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

While the Zeiss Anastigmat emerged as an emblem of transformative developments in optical production, there is a twist. According to Rudolf Kingslake, the reputation of the 1890 Zeiss Anastigmat far exceeded the actual performance of the lens. Furthermore, Zeiss withdrew most of its original Anastigmats from the market when their newly manufactured Planar, Unar, and Tessar lenses were circulated on the market.^[1]

Regardless of whether the original Zeiss Anastigmat fulfilled its original promises, “anastigmat” became useful as a cultural shorthand for the wide variety of lens correction that became normalized during the 1890s. The fact that the idea of the anastigmat – a lens that could capture the world without meaningfully distracting technological distortions – took on a life beyond its original object suggests the power of the desire for corrected lenses in global markets.

The Glass Works helped Zeiss establish itself as the primary global supplier of raw optical glass in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the design and mass manufacture of its anastigmat lenses helped the company establish and build itself as a precision lens manufacturer. Zeiss advertising and global strategy are an important third part of this story. Science and differentiation of “quality” were central to Zeiss’ global advertising strategy. There were a few different impetuses for quality to become central to discussions of lenses: a rise of fakes, a demand for international standards that allowed lenses to be reliably sold in multiple markets, and a rising number of commercial markets in which photographic lenses could be sold.

The Other Anastigmats

While scientific construction provided the basis for differentiating the quality of a lens in the 1890s, this language became less meaningful over the subsequent decade. Two paths of resistance emerged. First, the number of companies specializing in photographic lens production increased. Second, and perhaps more interestingly, many companies who made inexpensive lenses of dubious quality began to use the term anastigmat to describe their lenses. Although the term anastigmat was initially used by Zeiss to brand and denote high quality lens correction, the term anastigmat quickly came to be associated with lower quality lenses. As noted in The Camera (1918), the term anastigmat was “appropriated or rather misappropriated by many a maker of lenses, whose instruments are anything else than anastigmat.”^[2]

In the decade after Zeiss and its distributors began selling their specifically branded “Anastigmat” lenses, many other lens producers began to use the term anastigmat to describe their own lenses. Photographers and camera operators were increasingly interested in purchasing these distortionless lenses, and the construction of lenses based on the Anastigmat patent increased. Higher end lens makers such as Emil Busch, Ernemann, Goerz, and Voigtländer all used the term “anastigmat” to describe their lenses. CP Goerz also introduced the Dagor (Doppel-Anastigmat GOeRz) in 1893, and this lens was received to great acclaim.^[3] The popular association of anastigmatic lenses with quality was initially influenced by the way the term anastigmat was used to describe a particular class of precision lenses.

When the brand “Anastigmat” began to function as a generic term for corrected lenses, Zeiss rebranded these lenses under the name of Protar in 1900.^[4] In the front matter material of a 1902 catalogue, E. Krauss (Zeiss’ licensed affiliate in Paris) wrote the following explanation for the changes in brand naming:

We have named our premiere objectives “anastigmats,” for the reason of their excellent anastigmatic correction. But since the term “anastigmat” is only a scientific expression, many houses have used it to introduce their productions in the market, creating a regrettable confusion. We decided therefore to abandon the term “anastigmat” and took its place with the PROTAR which is the proper name for our series IIa, IIIa V, VII, and VIIa lenses. The construction of these lenses did not suffer, without saying, from this change.^[5]