München 2019 – scientific programme

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GP: Fachverband Geschichte der Physik

GP 5: Instruments as tools and subjects of research

GP 5.4: Talk

Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 12:30–13:00, HS 9

Research Technologyies and Innovation: Analytical Interferometers — •Christian Forstner — Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main

In this talk I will analyze the history of the analytical interferometer in the perspective of research technologies and innovation theory.

In 1905 Fritz Haber (1868-1934) approached his former school friend, the managing director of Zeiss Siegfried Czapski (1861-1907), with a request for an instrument that could be used to quickly and easily determine gas concentrations within 0.02%. Czapski assigned the work to his colleague Fritz Löwe (1874-1955). Since 1904, Löwe had been head of the measuring instruments department at the Zeiss factories in Jena. In close collaboration with Haber he developed two different types of analytical interferometers for this purpose: one for the academic laboratory and a more robust type for mining. Both were based on the principle a Raleigh interferometer.

The analytical interferometers were used in academic laboratories, in industry to determine the concentration of flammable gases in the air, in mines to determine the methane content of the air, and in medicine for metabolism measurements. Depending on their use all of them have been continuously improved and modified. After the end of World War II, Carl Zeiss Jena first launched a new laboratory interferometer in 1950, followed by a new mining interferometer in a compact design based on a Jamin interferometer in 1955. In 1979, the production of interferometers at the Zeiss plant in Jena was discontinued.