Göttingen: A Flashback
	Back to the year 1857. Rudolf Winkel sets up a mechanic's workshop in Göttingen. Guess what he makes? Right - microscopes. Simple ones at first, compound ones later. Good ones throughout. He is successful, exports a lot, expands the business, and has his sons enter it. Ernst Abbe first visits Winkel in 1894. In 1911, Carl Zeiss becomes the principal shareholder of the company, which continues to grow. After 1945, Jena's traditional microscope manufacture is continued in Göttingen. In 1957, the firm of R. Winkel GmbH is taken over by the Carl Zeiss Foundation. Today, the company which has contributed many improvements to microscope design, still makes about 80% of all Zeiss microscopes and employs about 750 people. They simply have deserved this brief flashback. For four decades, the Zeiss plants in eastern and western Germany operate separately and independently of one another. Achievements are made on both sides. There is no point in separately counting the points made by either side. Let us rather count the points made by Carl Zeiss at large. There are many of them in the chronicle of Zeiss microscope making in the years after 1945. Take 1949, for example: The intensive development efforts in transmission electron microscopy bears fruit. Or 1950: The first member of the Standard family of microscopes sees the light of day. It ushers in a modular, highly flexible system, which becomes one of the most successful developments in the history of microscopes. In the same year, Zeiss applies for a patent on the invention of a magnification changer known by the name of Optovar. 1955: Launching of an all-new photomicroscope with integrated camera and automatic exposure control.		Anticipating the Future How everything started A Long Story The Formula One The Glass The Light Turn of the century Stages of a Chronicle A Flashback Nobel Prizes
	1955: Automatic photomicroscope
	1959: The year of Ultrafluar. Zeiss succeeds in making dioptric objectives suitable for both ultraviolet and visible light. A big step ahead in microspectrophotometry. In 1965, materials researchers, doctors and biologists are happy with the new interference phase contrast (Interphako) technique for measuring object thicknesses in the nanometer range and refractive indices of tiniest substance volumes. In 1966 the Mikroval series of microscopes is started. The Ultraphot and Neophot, photomicroscopes of good repute, are upgraded into #2 versions and continue on their triumphant progress around the world. A scanning microscope photometer for the automatic photometry of microscopic specimens follows in 1969. Zeiss is always likely to turn out some innovation or other.
	1965: NEOPHOT 2 1969: Scanning microscope photometer
	1973 sees another instant: Zeiss presents the Axiomat microscope system, a modular system with zoom optics providing unparalleled stability and imaging performance.
	1973: Axiomat NDC
	In the same year, Epiquant makes its debut, a fully automatic digital petrofabric analyzer. In 1975 follow the Plan-Neofluar multi-immersion objectives, in 1976 the inverted IM 35 and ICM 405 microscopes in a design that sets new standards. 1982: Zeiss creates the prototype of a laser scanning microscope. Another sensation in the same year: the JENA MICROSCOPES 250-CF with new, fully color-corrected and infinity-corrected objectives, available at last for daily routine in medicine and biology. 1986: ICS optics, an optical highlight that still causes experts to go into raptures; the SI (System Integration) design, the Axioplan and Axiophot universal microscopes, the Axiotron inspection microscope for the semiconductor industry. 1987: Axioskop, a high-grade routine microscope. 1988: Axiovert inverted microscopes. 1995: Axioplan2 and Axiophot2 the first fully digital remote controlled microscopes ... where to begin, where to end? 1990: A great year. And, just this once, not because of microscopes. The Berlin wall comes down, and so does the wall between the two concerns bearing a common name. The agreement made between them to go together from now on seems to release extra thrust and to open up a new dimension - without borders or other limits. There always seems to have existed some affinity between Carl Zeiss and top-flight scientists. People with bold ideas have sought to get in touch with Zeiss, where many of the tools and methods for their research have come from, while Zeiss has always entertained close relations with universities and other research institutes. No wonder that quite a number of Nobel laureates have either, in their research, used Zeiss microscopes, or made discoveries or inventions that went into them. Our applause is due to all of these celebrities, even though we can only mention a few here.