PETZVAL, Josef Max

b. 6 January 1807; d. 17 September 1891

A Hungarian optician, Petzval was professor of Mathematics at the University of Vienna. He played a leading part in early photography by devising a portrait lens with an aperture of approximately f3.6 - gathering sixteen times more light than lenses currently in use at the time. which brought exposure times down to less than a minute, therefore began to pave the way for portraiture. This lens, which was made by his compatriot Peter Friedrich Voigtlander in 1841, was popularly used well into this century.

Sadly Petzval did not profit from this invention, unlike Voigtlander, with whom he had fallen out because he felt he had been cheated. Petzval died an embittered and impoverished man; Voigtlander old and rich two years later, having seen his firm expand from a small optical shop to a major industrial enterprise thanks to the success of the Petzval lens.

© Robert Leggat, 1998.