 | Abbe urges Schott to collaborate in the development of optical glasses with special properties. A few months later, in his native town of Witten, Schott makes the first melting experiments. In the following year he moves to Jena to work in a glass-making laboratory specially set up for him (the nucleus of what later is to become the Jena glassworks of Schott & Genossen).
The series of experiments consumes lots of effort, time and money. The success more than justifies every bit of it. A vision becomes true when Zeiss, in 1886, markets the first lot of an entirely new type of microscope objectives: apochromates. Made in different varieties as dry, water immersion and homogeneous immersion objectives, and used together with so-called compensating eyepieces, they provide images free from color distortions throughout the image field, "without their design having to be more intricate". This even applies to apochromates of relatively high aperture.
Together with Abbe's wave theory and sine condition, the new glass types provide the basis for practically any modern high-performance optics.
A note on the enterprise in between: In 1886, the year of the glass breakthrough, Zeiss employs 250 workmen and turns out the 10,000th microscope. | | |