Zeiss Optics UK – Latest Products & Company History

Information About Zeiss UK

The Zeiss Company began making precision optical instruments in 1846 within a short period of time they were supplying top quality precision optical equipment to clients throughout the world. Carl Zeiss trained his first employees to do the work in the same precise manner as he always made his equipment.

Zeiss Optics History

Since their earliest inception the Zeiss company has excelled in precise optical equipment producing 23 microscopes in their first year and by the 1890s they were making riflescopes, binoculars, and still making medical instruments like microscopes etc.  By the year 1864 Zeiss employed over 200 employees. In 1866 they delivered the 1,000th Carl Zeiss microscope.

In 1893 they opened their first subsidiary in London, England, and pre world war one sites were established all around the world. Since the end of world war two the Zeiss company has grown into an international precision optical company. Many of the world’s leading technicians began their careers working in the research and development sections of the Zeiss company. Men like Otto Schott who invented a fluorite glass blend which is now known as borosilicate Crown (BK) glass. This BK glass can be polished until nearly all imperfections are removed making BK glass the best for light transmission and it’s used by all of the top optical companies for binoculars, spotting scopes, microscopes, in fact anywhere that high precision top quality optical glass is needed.

Ernst Abbe collaborated with Zeiss on many projects starting with microscopes and in 1875 Abbe was made a partner in the company.

Paul Rudolph worked for Zeiss and as a physicist he developed the first anastigmat lens in 1890. This revolutionised the world of photography by removing many of the chromatic aberrations that photos suffered before this time. This technology was later introduced into the binocular and spotting scope lenses to create crisper, sharper images.

In 1894 Zeiss introduced their first Porro prism binoculars under the watchful eye of Ernste Abbe, which were mainly used by the military as they were too costly for the average working man. With a pair of binoculars costing the equivalent of one months wages for the average working man. 

By the end of the 19th century Zeiss had negotiated many alliances with several manufacturers throughout the world including Bausch & Lomb Optical Co. from Rochester New York. By the year 1900 the Zeiss company employed over 1,000 people. By the end of world war two Zeiss had produced more than 2,260,000 pairs of binoculars for both military and civilian use. 

When Roald Amundsen set off to reach the geographic South Pole in 1911, he took a pair of Zeiss binoculars with him. The Zeiss company has survived two world wars and is still going strong today.

During the early 1990s Zeiss introduced the 20×60 S binoculars; these employed a revolutionary stabilisation mechanism that needed no electronic or hydraulic mechanisms, and won the Zeiss company the R&D magazine award for “developing one of the most important technical innovations of 1992”.

Coming right up to the present time with the Zeiss 20×60 T* S Image Stabilised Binoculars which is the modern version of those award winning binoculars from 1992. Still using a purely mechanical image stabilisation system that works at the touch of a button.

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