Carl Zeiss vision

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Carl Zeiss Vision International GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 2005
Seat Aalen , Germany
management Matthias Metz, Paul Bilsdorfer
Number of employees 109
sales EUR 265.79 million
Branch Optics
Website www.zeiss.de/vision
As of September 30, 2017

The Carl Zeiss Vision International GmbH, headquartered in Aalen is a 100 percent subsidiary of Carl Zeiss AG and its corporate Vision Care. The company provides products and services along the entire  value chain  of  ophthalmic optics , in particular lenses and instruments (to determine the visual acuity Refraction ) and for fitting glasses.

history

Carl Zeiss sold glasses from other manufacturers in its own shop until 1880, after which it specialized in the manufacture of microscopes . From 1901 a cooperation began between Carl Zeiss Jena and the Swedish professor and for ophthalmology and later Nobel Prize winner Allvar Gullstrand , from which many ideas for ophthalmic products arose. In 1908, under the direction of Moritz von Rohrs , the establishment of an eyewear department began. On April 1, 1912, the optics department at Carl Zeiss Jena was founded.

After the Second World War , there were two companies in Oberkochen and Jena that bore the name Carl Zeiss. The Jena company was nationalized in 1948. In 1965, VEB Carl Zeiss Jena became the lead company of the VEB Carl Zeiss Jena combine. At the same time the VEB Rathenower Optische Werke (ROW) was connected to it. In Rathenow the production of spectacle was concentrated since 1974, in Jena the last lens was made in 1980. The problem of inadequate glasses supply for the GDR population was never solved. After the fall of the Wall , Essilor and Fielmann took over parts of the production capacities in Rathenow.

In 1945, when the American occupation forces withdrew from Thuringia, they took leading company specialists with them to Heidenheim in Württemberg. These employees founded a company in Oberkochen that soon also bore the name Carl Zeiss. There was initially a computing office in Nattheim for eyeglass lenses. Production started in Oberkochen as early as 1946. In 1957 this division of the company moved to Aalen.

In 2005, the merger of the optics business of the Carl Zeiss Group and the eyeglass lens manufacturer Sola (Scientific Optical Laboratories of Australia), founded in Adelaide in 1960, resulted in the establishment of Carl Zeiss Vision as an independent company. In 1996, Sola took over the glasses division of the traditional American manufacturer American Optical (AO), which was founded in 1869. In order to be able to take the financial risk of the takeover, Zeiss was dependent on the financial investor EQT for five years . After a decline in sales in the eyewear business in the wake of the financial crisis from 2007 , the Carl Zeiss Group bought EQT's stake again in 2010, thereby helping to reduce the debt of Carl Zeiss Vision.

Portfolio

Carl Zeiss Vision produces mineral and organic single vision lenses , multifocal lenses (varifocal, bifocal and trifocal), filter lenses ( sun lenses , photochromic lenses, special filter lenses), magnifying visual aids (for the visually impaired as well as for medicine and technology) and devices for determining refraction (lens determination Lens centering, precision measuring glasses). It also offers services and marketing solutions for opticians as well as products for cleaning glasses.

Product history

The first lens that took the pivot point into account was the Punktal . It made it possible to see with a high degree of visual acuity even if you weren't looking straight ahead. Before that, the spectacle wearer had to turn his head in order to avoid blurring when looking through the edge area of ​​the glasses. Katral glasses were introduced for medical purposes , as were the world's first industrially manufactured adhesive glasses (scleral lenses), which are a forerunner of modern contact lenses .

When rebuilding in Oberkochen, West Germany, the glasses had a high priority because the population had a lot of catching up to do. Nevertheless, from 1945 to 1950, the entire range of glasses was recalculated in order to be the first company to take physiological visual conditions into account.

In 1959 the first anti-reflective coatings for spectacle lenses (ET = simple transparency layer) were introduced, based on a process that Alexander Smakula had developed at Carl Zeiss in 1935. Such coatings are still an important development area for all ophthalmic lens manufacturers (1974 multiple coating Super ET ; 2012 DuraVision Platinum ). Other coating processes that were developed at Carl Zeiss were used to harden the glasses. However, they only had a major impact on plastic glasses. Since 1959 progressive lenses have become more and more important on the market. After having dealt with this topic half-heartedly for a long time, the Gradal HS was launched in 1983, a progressive lens that had identical optical properties for both eyes in all directions. This brought enormous progress in the compatibility of the glasses. Even with the plastic glasses introduced in 1960, people initially acted rather wait-and-see. The world's first higher-index plastic glass, Clarlet SL , made it possible to make glasses up to 40 percent thinner and therefore lighter, with a refractive index of up to 1.74.

Since 2000, individually adapted progressive lenses have been gaining ever greater market share. An important prerequisite for this is the freeform technology developed and patented by Carl Zeiss Vision for the production of spectacle lenses. In addition to the dioptric power, customer parameters for fitting glasses are also included in the calculation of the varifocal surfaces for the first time. The i.Scription process provides since 2007 with the help of wavefront measurement in addition the data to account for the so-called "higher order aberrations" are available. The personally adapted glasses are then manufactured using what is known as freeform technology.

The possibilities for customizing spectacle lenses that come with freeform technology have since created completely new product categories such as: B. the workplace glasses (Office Lenses), which can be individually adapted to the respective (office) workplace situation. The most recent example of ongoing product diversification are the driver's glasses, available since 2016 under the name “DriveSafe” . Using freeform technology, it is possible to optimize the varifocal zones with regard to the gaze behavior when driving while at the same time maintaining the full suitability of this lens for everyday use. The specially developed DriveSafe coating and the so-called LuminanceDesign technology also result in better visibility in poor visibility conditions (twilight, rain, at night, etc.) and a reduction in the perceived glare from oncoming LED and Xenon headlights.

Locations

literature

  • Stephan Paetrow: See better. Carl Zeiss Augenoptik 1912 - 2012. Hanseatischer Merkur, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-922857-55-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Annual financial statements as of September 30, 2017 in the electronic Federal Gazette
  2. ^ Gerhard Kühn, Wolfgang Roos: Seven centuries of glasses. (= Deutsches Museum. Treatises and reports. 36th Jg., H. 3.) R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1968, pp. 48–54.
  3. ↑ Anita Kuisle : Glasses. Glasses - frames - production. Deutsches Museum, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-924183-65-1 , p. 34f.
  4. ↑ Stephan Paetrow: ... what belongs together. 20 years of reunification of Carl Zeiss. Hanseatischer Merkur, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-922857-51-8 .
  5. ↑ Stephan Paetrow: See better. Carl Zeiss Augenoptik 1912 - 2012. Hanseatischer Merkur, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-922857-55-6 , pp. 71ff.
  6. ↑ Stephan Paetrow: See better. Carl Zeiss Augenoptik 1912 - 2012. Hanseatischer Merkur, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-922857-55-6 , p. 109ff.
  7. ↑ Carl Zeiss buys back the glasses business. In: Handelsblatt online. August 23, 2010, accessed December 2, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Robert Ferdinand Heitz: Keratoconus and the use of early contact lenses (1888-1920). (= The History of contact lenses. Volume 2.) G. Schmidt, Oostende 2005, pp. 283-295.
  9. ^ Gerhard Kühn, Wolfgang Roos: Seven centuries of glasses. (= Deutsches Museum. Treatises and reports. 36th Jg., H. 3.) R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1968, p. 58f.
  10. ↑ H. Ulffers: Lens development. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, supplement technology: Research and development in the Carl Zeiss factory. 1966, pp. 55-58.
  11. ↑ E.-H. Schmitz: The glasses. (= Handbook for the history of optics. Supplementary volume 3, part A.) JP Wayenborgh, Oostende 1995, pp. 337-344.
  12. ↑ E.-H. Schmitz: The glasses. (= Handbook for the history of optics. Supplementary volume 3, part A.) JP Wayenborgh, Oostende 1995, pp. 214–233.
  13. ↑ E.-H. Schmitz: The glasses. (= Handbook for the history of optics. Supplementary volume 3, part A.) JP Wayenborgh, Oostende 1995, pp. 289–303.
  14. ↑ E.-H. Schmitz: The glasses. (= Handbook for the history of optics. Supplementary volume 3, part A.) JP Wayenborgh, Oostende 1995, pp. 360–368.
  15. ↑ Christine Höckmann: Inquiry: Ten years of individual varifocal with Zeiss. In: DOZ, 01/2010, p. 37 ( PDF; 142 kB ( Memento of the original dated December 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to instructions and then remove this notice. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.doz-verlag.de
  16. ↑ Bärbel Scholtysik: Perspective. In: DOZ, 03/2010, p. 20 ( PDF; 792 kB ( Memento from December 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))