Zeiss and the Industrialization of Vision (1886-1900) - Text 1
With the new kinds of optical glass materials produced at the Glass Works, Zeiss was able to create the material infrastructure necessary to expand its lens-manufacturing processes from an artisanal production model to a large-scale systematic production of precision optical instruments. In turning “optical glass into a technical material,” a material “precisely specified and reproducible in its properties,”[1] Schott enabled the reliable production of multiple kinds of precision optical instruments. New glass materials, as well as Zeiss’ concerted effort to define quality through scientific rhetoric, resulted in Zeiss significantly expanding its facilities and product lines in the 1880s. The expanding practices of photography and cinema were influential parts of these expansions, but nonetheless only parts in a growing field of lens-based practices that supported the industrial and economic expansion of modern culture at the turn of the twentieth century.
