Zeiss and the Industrialization of Vision (1886-1900) - Text 3
Anastigmats were exceptionally valuable to photographers and cinematographers because they simultaneously corrected two significant kinds of lens distortion: chromatic aberration (where different colors of light reached a recording medium, like celluloid film or a collodion plate, at different points) and spherical aberration (where image focus was clear in the image center but increasingly softer at the edges of the film). Prior to anastigmats, most lenses could correct for chromatic aberration or spherical aberration – but not both. From 1886 to 1900, Zeiss dramatically expanded the scale and scope of their operations. As the first phase of the “anastigmat era,” it was a period when the development of precision lenses at scale began to flourish.
