1463
Polytechnic Institute. Peter’s practical experience and
knowledge was broadened by travelling and working in
Germany, France and England.
His primary area of interest was optical theory,
including calculating the refraction and diffusion
characteristics of various types of glass. It was inevi-
table, therefore that he soon befriended and began to
collaborate with the mathematician Josef Max Petzval
(1807–1891) who in 1837, the same year that Peter took
over from his father, had become professor of higher
mathematics at the University of Vienna. In 1840, Petz-
val, who had not designed a lens before, mathematically
calculated the optimum arrangement for a lens intended
specifi cally for photography. Up to this time, camera
objectives were simple lenses that had been designed for
other uses. The slowness of these lenses exacerbated the
lack of sensitivity of the earliest photographic processes.
Petzval entrusted the construction of his, at the time still
theoretical, lens to his friend von Voigtländer. The fi rst
sample Petzval lens was completed in May 1840. It was
made up of two separate asymmetrical lens components,
a front lens with a forward-facing convex surface and
a rear component consisting of one planoconcave and
one biconvex lens, separated by a space. Defi nition and
illumination was excellent in the centre of the fi eld but
deteriorated gradually towards the edge of the picture.
However, this was not seen as a problem for portrait
photography and could even be regarded as benefi cial
since it tended to emphasis the actual portrait area and
suppress unwanted background detail. Petzval’s design
became the standard lens for portraiture until well into
the twentieth century.
The original Petzval Portrait lens had an aperture of
f/3.6. This made it sixteen times faster than the simple
meniscus lenses that were currently in use and reduced
exposure times from minutes to seconds. In 1841, von
Voigtländer fi tted a Petzval lens into an all-metal da-
guerreotype camera that he designed and manufactured.
Of distinctive and unusual design, von Voigtländer’s
camera consisted of a conical brass body with the lens
at its apex. A shorter conical focussing attachment with
a ground glass screen and a magnifying eyepiece could
be screwed into the other end. The camera rested on a
cradle on top of a telescopic pillar. After focussing, the
camera was removed from the stand and carried to a
darkroom where the focussing attachment was removed
and replaced by a plate-holder containing a sensitised
circular daguerreotype plate, 94mm in diameter. The
camera was repositioned on its stand and the exposure
made by removing and replacing the lens cap. It is
estimated that von Voigtländer produced about 70 of
these cameras in 1841 and around 600 the following
year. Today, however, only about a dozen are still known
to exist.
Despite their initial friendship and shared interests,
von Voigtländer and Petzval soon quarrelled, primarily
because Petzval felt he had not received suffi cient
fi nancial reward for his invention. By the end of the
1840s the two men had ceased to be on speaking terms.
Petzval had taken out an Austrian patent for his lens
but in 1849 von Voigtländer established a second fac-
tory in Braunschweig, Germany, which was his wife’s
hometown. Here, there were no legal restrictions and
von Voigtländer continued to produce Petzval lenses
in increasing numbers. In 1862 he produced his ten
thousandth lens. In 1866 von Voigtländer closed his
original factory in Vienna. That same year he was made
a member of the hereditary peerage by Emperor Franz
Joseph of Austria, which entitled him to use the prefi x
‘von’ before his name.
Peter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer retired in
1876 at the age of 64, handing over the business to his
son, Friedrich Ritter von Voigtländer (1846–1924), the
last of four generations of von Voigtländers connected
with the optical industry. Friedrich, a fi ne lens designer
in his own right, ensured the continuing success of the
company with the introduction of the Euryscope lens in
1886 and the Collinear lens in 1892. Around the turn of
the century, von Voigtländer branched out into camera
manufacture which was subsequently to become a major
part of the company’s business.
Colin HardingFurther Reading
Brian Coe, Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures,
Marshall Cavendish Editions, 1980.
Rudolf Kingslake, A History of the Photographic Lens, Academic
Press Inc, 1989.
Louis Walton Sipley, Photography’s Great Inventors, American
Museum of Photography, 1965.VUILLARD, ÉDOUARD (1868–1940)
French painter and lithographer
Édouard Vuillard, known primarily as a painter and
lithographer, produced over 2000 photographs (1700
as original prints) during his lifetime. Vuillard began
experimenting with a hand-held Kodak camera in the
late 1880’s along with fellow artists Pierre Bonnard and
Maurice Denis. These photographs taken throughout
his lifetime focused primarily on the artist’s circle of
family and friends, as was the case with his paintings.
He used the camera as a witness, spontaneously asking
those around him to “hold it please” when he wanted
to record a casual everyday moment, as mentioned in
“Vuillard et son Kodak.”
Vuillard also utilized photography to experiment
with spatial ambiguity often staging scenes he later
recreated in his paintings. The artist composed many