Zeiss ( ZYSSE; German: [kaʁl ˈtsaɪs]) is a German manufacturer of optical systems and optoelectronics, founded in Jena, Germany, in 1846 by optician Carl Zeiss. Together with Ernst Abbe (joined 1866) and Otto Schott (joined 1884) he laid the foundation for today's multinational company. The current company emerged from a reunification of Carl Zeiss companies in East and West Germany with a consolidation phase in the 1990s. Zeiss is active in four business segments with approximately equal revenue (Industrial Quality and Research, Medical Technology, Consumer Markets and Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology) in almost 50 countries, has 30 production sites and around 25 development sites worldwide. Carl Zeiss AG is the holding company for all subsidiaries within the Zeiss Group, of which Carl Zeiss Meditec AG is the only one that is traded on the stock market. Carl Zeiss AG is owned by the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung foundation. The Zeiss Group has its headquarters in southern Germany, in the small town of Oberkochen, with its second largest, and founding site, being Jena in eastern Germany. Also controlled by the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung is the glass manufacturer Schott AG, located in Mainz and Jena. Carl Zeiss is one of the oldest optics manufacturers in the world.
Corporate history
Carl Zeiss opened an optics workshop in Jena in 1846. By 1847, he was making microscopes full-time. In 1861, the rapidly growing company had a staff of about 20 and won a gold medal at the Thuringian Industrial Exposition. By 1866 Zeiss sold their 1,000th microscope. In 1872 physicist Ernst Abbe joined Zeiss, and along with Otto Schott designed greatly improved lenses for the optical instruments they were producing. After Carl Zeiss's death in 1888, the business was incorporated as the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung in 1889. By World War I, Zeiss was the world's largest producer of cameras. Zeiss Ikon represented a significant part of the production, along with dozens of other brands and factories, including a major works at Dresden. In 1928 the Zeiss company acquired Hensoldt AG, which has produced Zeiss binoculars and rifle-scopes since 1964 this has occasionally resulted in twin products being offered under both the "Hensoldt" and "Zeiss" brand-names. The Hensoldt System Technology division (resulting from a merger of the military-optics operations of Leica and Hensoldt) was continued by Zeiss under the "Hensoldt" name until 2006. As part of Nazi Germany's Zwangsarbeiter program, Zeiss used forced labour, including Jews and other minorities during World War II. The destruction of the war caused many companies to divide into smaller subcompanies and others to merge. There was great respect for the engineering innovation that came out of Dresden—before the war the world's first 35 mm single-lens reflex camera, the Kine Exakta, and the first miniature camera with good picture-quality were developed there. At the end of the war, Jena was initially occupied by the United States Army. When Jena and Dresden were incorporated into the Soviet occupation zone, later East Germany, the US Army relocated some parts of Zeiss Jena to the Contessa manufacturing facility in Stuttgart, West Germany, while the remainder of Zeiss Jena was reestablished by the (eastern) German Democratic Republic as Kombinat VEB Zeiss Jena. The Soviet Army relocated most of the existing Zeiss factories and tooling to the Soviet Union, establishing the Kiev camera-works. In the West, business activity restarted in Oberkochen in present-day Baden-Württemberg (southwestern Germany) as Opton Optische Werke Oberkochen GmbH in 1946, which became Zeiss-Opton Optische Werke Oberkochen GmbH in 1947, but was soon renamed to "Carl Zeiss". West-German Zeiss products were labelled "Opton" for sale in the Eastern bloc, while East German Zeiss products were labelled "Zeiss Jena" or simply "Jena" for sale in Western countries. In 1973, the Western Carl Zeiss AG entered into a licensing agreement with the Japanese camera-company Yashica to produce a series of high-quality 35 mm film-cameras and lenses bearing the Contax and Zeiss brand names. This collaboration continued under Yashica's successor, Kyocera, until the latter ceased all camera production in 2005. Zeiss later produced lenses for the space industry and, more recently, has again produced high-quality 35 mm camera-lenses. The eastern Zeiss Jena was also well known for producing high-quality products. Following the German reunification of 1989–1991, VEB Zeiss Jena — reckoned as one of the few East-German firms that was even potentially able to compete on a global basis — became Zeiss Jena GmbH, which became Jenoptik Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH in 1990. In 1991, Jenoptik Carl Zeiss Jena was split in two, with Carl Zeiss AG (Oberkochen) taking over the company's divisions for microscopy and other precision optics (effectively reuniting the pre-war Carl Zeiss enterprise) and moving its microscopy and planetarium divisions back to Jena. Jenoptik GmbH was split off as a specialty company in the areas of photonics, optoelectronics, and mechatronics. The Hensoldt AG was renamed "Carl Zeiss Sports Optics GmbH" on 1 October 2006. The companies of the Zeiss Gruppe in and around Dresden have branched into new technologies: screens and products for the automotive industry, for example.
As of 2023 there are arguably three companies with primarily "Zeiss Ikon" heritage: Zeiss Germany, the Finnish/Swedish Ikon (which bought the West German Zeiss Ikon AG), and the independent eastern Zeiss Ikon. A division called "Carl Zeiss Vision" produces lenses for eyeglasses. In 2005, the eyeglass division merged with U.S. company SOLA, which included the former American Optical Company. On 28 June 2013, Carl Zeiss announced its plan to rename the brand from "Carl Zeiss" to simply "Zeiss". All the products were to be standardized under the "Zeiss" brand. In April 2019, Zeiss announced the acquisition of Brunswick-based GOM.
Innovations
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