The Mathematical-Mechanical Institute (German: Mathematisch-mechanisches Institut; later also Mathematisch-Feinmechanisches Institut) was a Munich workshop for scientific instruments, established in 1802 by the engineer Georg Friedrich von Reichenbach and the mechanic Joseph Liebherr. Joseph von Utzschneider joined them in 1804 as financier and commercial director. The institute produced instruments for geodesy, surveying and astronomy; its workshops brought together precise metalworking, circle graduation, optical glass and achromatic lens manufacture. The workshop grew out of the needs of the Bavarian state survey. Reichenbach and Liebherr built dividing engines and compact instruments for field and observatory work. Utzschneider later established glassmaking and optical production at the secularised Benediktbeuern Abbey, where Joseph von Fraunhofer developed optical glass, lens-making and methods of testing finished optics. The Optical Institute at Benediktbeuern was separated contractually from the Munich mechanical workshop in 1809, but each continued to supply the other. Their products included theodolites, repeating circles, meridian circles, transit instruments, heliometers and large refracting telescopes. The original partnership ended in stages: Liebherr withdrew in 1812, and Reichenbach and Utzschneider separated in 1814. Reichenbach continued the mechanical workshop with Traugott Ertel and transferred it to Ertel in 1821. Utzschneider retained the optical works with Fraunhofer and opened a competing Munich workshop with Liebherr and Werner. After Fraunhofer's death, Georg Merz and Franz Joseph Mahler directed the optical and mechanical departments and acquired the business in two stages, in 1838 and 1839. The Ertel line continued under later owners until 1984. The Merz company stopped production in 1932 and was deleted from the commercial register in 1938.
History
Foundation and early workshop The Bavarian Topographical Bureau provided the workshop's first institutional setting. Created during the French occupation to prepare a military-topographical map, it was retained by the Bavarian government after the French withdrawal. The bureau lacked suitable field instruments. Joseph von Utzschneider, who was assigned to it and advocated a wider cadastral survey, saw a continuing state market for accurate angular-measuring instruments. Georg Friedrich von Reichenbach had studied English engineering and instrument workshops during a government-supported journey in the 1790s. After returning to Bavaria, he devised a machine for graduating circular scales. In late 1801 or 1802 he joined Joseph Liebherr, a clockmaker and mechanic who had established himself in Munich, to turn the design into a working machine and to manufacture instruments. The Benedictine astronomer and surveyor Ulrich Schiegg advised the two men, tested their instruments and introduced their work to Utzschneider. In May 1802 the Bavarian Academy of Sciences advanced 600 guilders towards a mathematical workshop, although the money was later recalled after a dispute over the quality assessment. The first dividing engine came from their collaboration. Reichenbach devised its geometrical principle and specified the graduation work; Liebherr built the mechanism, drawing on a gear-cutting machine that he had made in 1794. Both men later claimed priority. Reviewing the dispute in his 2014 scholarly biography of Utzschneider, the historian of mathematics and science Ivo Schneider found no basis for assigning the invention exclusively to either man. Utzschneider later called it the “Reichenbach–Liebherr” dividing machine. By early 1804 the workshop had completed a 16-inch terrestrial circle, a portable meridian instrument and an 18-inch astronomical circle. The terrestrial circle measured horizontal and vertical field angles and could be read to a few seconds of arc. On the astronomical circle an observer could repeat the same angle several times before reading the scale, reducing some reading error. Schiegg tested the instruments while determining the latitude of Munich, and Franz Xaver von Zach reported the results in his Monatliche Correspondenz.
Utzschneider partnership On 20 August 1804 Reichenbach, Liebherr and Utzschneider signed a partnership contract for a workshop producing mathematical and mechanical instruments in Munich. The agreement assigned Reichenbach 40 per cent of the profits and responsibility for scientific and technical design, including centring and graduation where the greatest precision was required. Liebherr, with a 30-per-cent share, was the first master of the workshop and supervised the journeymen according to Reichenbach's instructions. Utzschneider also received 30 per cent; he supplied capital and premises, bought materials, kept the accounts and handled commercial management. Decisions about the product range and prices required all three partners. Utzschneider undertook to pay monthly advances of 90 guilders to Reichenbach and 70 to Liebherr. The new capital allowed the work to be divided more closely. In October 1805 Schiegg reported a staff of seven, further recruitment and orders from the observatories at Ofen (Buda) and Riga. The Bavarian survey remained an important customer, while correspondence, reports and price lists brought orders from outside the kingdom. Reichenbach designed the instruments and performed the most exact operations; Utzschneider managed finance and sales; Liebherr directed the craftsmen. The dividing engine made it possible to mark finely spaced, nearly uniform angular scales on brass or silver-inlaid circles. This reduced dependence on laborious hand division and allowed the workshop to make families of instruments in several sizes. Reichenbach simplified the frames and axes of field instruments to make them lighter without abandoning rigid construction. His designs included repeating theodolites, universal instruments, levels, plane-table equipment and distance-measuring devices, as well as astronomical circles and transit instruments.
Optical production at Benediktbeuern
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