Planetarium History

Oskar von Miller | Deutsches Museum

Founder of the Deutsches Museum and initiator of the modern planetarium

Oskar von Miller | Deutsches Museum

The ZEISS Planetarium in Munich in 1925 © Deutsches Museum

Oskar von Miller (7 May 1855 – 9 April 1934) was a German engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In 1903 he fulfilled his dream of founding the museum devoted to science and technology. He wanted to have two models of planetariums in the planned new building of the museum, at that time called Copernican and Ptolemaic planetariums. The realization of the Ptolemaic planetarium, whose purpose was to reflect the celestial view illustrating the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets, proved to be a great challenge. All the companies who were approached refused to build it, including, initially, Carl Zeiss Jena. The first ideas for such a planetarium were based on the large rotating globes that already existed, where visitors would sit inside the globe with the celestial objects visible on the inner surface. Oskar von Miller did not give up and eventually found a partner in ZEISS to build both planetariums. However, the technical solution of the ZEISS Ptolemaic Planetarium was completely different from the one originally conceived. It was based on projection technology. Originally intended only for the Sun, Moon and planets, it turned out that the stars could also be displayed to appear naturally by arranging a number of projectors on a small rotating sphere in the center of a dome with a white projection surface. When the new building, located on Munich’s Museum Island, was ceremonially opened on May 7, 1925, on the occasion of Oskar von Miller's 70th birthday, the two ZEISS planetariums also welcomed their first visitors.

Credit:

Deutsches Museum

About the Image

Image ID

dm3168

Category

Planetarium History

Release

ca. 1925

Related product

n.a.

Size

6800 x 9100 px

Author

unknown

Source

Deutsches Museum München

Credit

Deutsches Museum München

License

CC BY-NC-ND

About the Content

Title

Oskar von Miller

Object

 

Location

Munich, Germany

Keywords

zeiss planetarium, planetarium history, planetarium projector,  deutsches museum munich

Date

ca. 1925

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