Carl August von Steinheil
Carl August von Steinheil
(12 October 1801 –
14 September 1870)
was a German
physicist.
Steinheil
was born in Ribeauvillé
, Alsace
.
He studied
law in Erlangen
since 1821,
then astronomy in Göttingen
and Königsberg
. He continued his studies in astronomy and
physics when he started living on his father's manor in Perlachseck
near Munich
.
He was
professor for mathematics and physics at the University of
Munich
from 1832 to 1849.
In 1839,
Steinheil used silver chloride and a
cardboard camera to make pictures in negative from the Museum of Art and the Munich
Frauenkirche
, then taking another picture of the negative to get
a positive, the actual black and white
reproduction of a view on the object. The round pictures
were about four cm wide, the way to get these pictures was called
"Steinheil method".
In 1846
Steinheil was called to Naples
to install a
new system for weight and measure units. Three years later, he
was in the Board of Telegraphy in the
Austrian
Trade Ministry, designing a
telegraph network for the entire empire,
and helped to form the "Deutsch-Österreichischer Telegraphenverein"
(German-Austrian Telegraph Society). In 1851 he started the
Swiss
telegraph network, when he returned to Munich as
'Konservator' of the mathematic-physical collections and
ministerial secretary in the Trade Ministry of Bavaria
. He
founded the optical-astronomical company
C.A.
Steinheil und Söhne to build
telescopes,
spectroscopes and
photometers (his invention, used to measure
brightness). Since 1852, he added
refractors and
reflectors
with silver-covered mirrors to the production. The silvering was
done in a process developed by his friend
Justus Liebig. Since 1862, his sons continued
his company.
Steinheil
died in Munich in Bavaria in 1870.
Inventions
References
- Steinheil-Verfahren
External links
- http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/steinheil.html
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