History of the subsidiaries of ZEISS

The Precision Measuring division was founded at Carl Zeiss in 1919. That same year was the first time that Carl Zeiss presented instruments for production metrology at the Leipzig Spring Trade Fair. After World War II and the subsequent division of Germany, a new plant was built in Oberkochen. The Precision Measurement division was re-established as well.

The business division has been operating under the name Industrielle Messtechnik (Industrial Metrology) since 1976 . Between 1989 and 1998, the company grew considerably: Strategic partnerships were concluded with the companies Stiefelmeyer and TSK. Numerex, an American manufacturer of bridge-type measuring machines in Minneapolis, was acquired in 1989. The factory in Minneapolis was now the second production site. In 2002, its assembly area doubled in size when it moved to a new building. Just two years later, the Shanghai plant – the third assembly site for coordinate measuring machines – opened.

Today, more than 1,800 people work at Carl Zeiss Industrielle Messtechnik GmbH. The range of products extends from bridge-type and horizontal-arm measuring machines to measuring instruments for determining shape, contour, and surfaces, right up to an extensive array of accompanying services.

The history of Medical Technology at Carl Zeiss began in 1893 when Carl Zeiss built a monocular corneal microscope to the specifications of the Dresden-based ophthalmologist Fritz Schanz. Then, little by little, new and better systems were added – all developed in close collaboration with outstanding physicians. The partnership with the Swedish ophthalmologist and subsequent Nobel Prize winner Allvar Gullstrand was of particular importance. The first scientifically calculated eyeglass lenses were his idea. Ophthalmic optics inspired ophthalmic instrument construction and vice-versa. In 1912, the first two business divisions were established.

While ophthalmic instrument production was commenced at Carl Zeiss at the end of the 19th century, the surgical disciplines were discovered a field of application for medical optics in Oberkochen after Carl Zeiss had been split up as a result of the Cold War. The OPMI 1 surgical microscope developed by Hans Littmann in 1953 was the first of a new class of instruments, and – as the standard in microsurgery – it became a permanent feature in clinical practice.

In December 1990, even before the official reunification of Carl Zeiss, the management teams of the Medical Technology divisions in East and West agreed to have Oberkochen focus on surgical microscopes, while Jena was to devote itself to ophthalmic instrument technology. When fundamental restructuring of the Carl Zeiss Group was initiated in 1995, the reorganization process in Medical Technology was already largely complete. And yet one basic problem remained: Oberkochen, Jena and Carl Zeiss subsidiary Humphrey Instruments located in Dublin, California, all worked independently of each other and on separate projects. There was hardly any synergy, and the instruments from each individual site rather gave the impression that they were from completely different manufacturers.

The road from individual products to complex solutions began at the turn of the millennium. In 2002, the founding of Carl Zeiss Meditec AG became a reality. Initially, just the medical technology divisions of the Carl Zeiss sites in Jena and Dublin, California, as well as Jena-based Asclepion Meditec AG were united in the new company. The formation of this company as a reverse IPO (the acquisition of a company already listed on the stock exchange) solved several problems at once: It gave Carl Zeiss access to business with refractive lasers (hitherto the sole domain of Asclepion), strengthened the Jena location, enabled extra capital to be raised on the stock market, and placed all the medical technology activities dispersed among the various sites under one umbrella. The process was completed with the reform of the Carl Zeiss Foundation in 2004 and the new opportunity for Carl Zeiss Meditec AG to acquire the Oberkochen OPMI business.

However, this was just the beginning of implementing the actual strategy of complete diagnostic and treatment solutions. Through the acquisition of IOLTECH (2005) and Acri.Tec (2007), Carl Zeiss Meditec AG expanded its portfolio, offering products such as intraocular lenses and consumables for eye surgery. Thus, Carl Zeiss moved beyond the traditional divisions of Optics and Precision Mechanics towards consumer goods less impacted by economic cycles. This has certainly contributed to the fact that Carl Zeiss Meditec AG proved to be a stable pillar for the Group’s activities during the global financial and economic crisis in 2009. Since the health sector continues to grow on a global scale, the forecast for Carl Zeiss Meditec AG is downright positive.

Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH is the microscope manufacturer under the roof of Carl Zeiss AG. It was a long road from the humble beginnings of microscopy at Carl Zeiss in the workshop founded in 1846 to the establishment of Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH. The development of microscopes at Carl Zeiss began with the manufacture of simple but very precise monocular light microscopes and grew into more complex forms such as the compound microscope. The work of Ernst Abbe, Otto Schott, and August Köhler was a significant factor in this process.

The Second World War and the partition of Germany exerted a strong influence on the development and production of microscopes during the 20th century. In 1947, most of the factory in Jena was dismantled. A new company with the same name was established in Oberkochen, West Germany. The two Carl Zeiss companies in both East and West Germany operated independently until 1991. In 2006, the areas that manufactured microscopes were merged under the umbrella of Carl Zeiss MicroImaging GmbH, headquartered in Jena. In 2011, the Electron Microscopy departement was integrated along with production sites in Oberkochen, Peabody, and Cambridge. The company was renamed Carl Zeiss Microscopy and and its headquarters established in Jena, where it all began.

Alongside Jena, the Göttingen and Munich sites offer perfect solutions for biological research, industry and the public health sector. Its product line comprises light microscopes, confocal systems for laser scanning microscopes, the entire electron microscope range and customized software for image evaluation and documentation. All of these products have made Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH one of the leading manufacturers of microscope systems.

In 1968, progress in the area of camera lenses enable Carl Zeiss in Oberkochen to manufacture new types of optics for lithography for Telefunken. In 1977, ZEISS unveiled the S-Planar 10/0.28, the first lens to enable the opto-lithographic production of 1 µm structures. This laid the foundation for the first wafer stepper.

The current partnership with Philips subsidiary Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography (ASML) also began in 1983 with the dispatch of the first projection and illumination optics from ZEISS. This business relationship became a strategic partnership in fiscal year 1992/93. For ZEISS, the new millennium marked the beginning of a new era in the semiconductor industry – mainly with 193-nanometer technology, which had brought about the next technological breakthrough in the area of lithography optics in 1998.. As a result of the increasing success of the ZEISS Group, the decision was made to pool the light, electron and ion-optical technologies in an independently operating business group.

Carl Zeiss SMT GmbH with its subsidiaries Carl Zeiss Laser Optics GmbH, Carl Zeiss SMS GmbH and Carl Zeiss NTS GmbH was founded in October 2001 (in 2010, Carl Zeiss NTS was transferred to the Microscopy business group). In the years to follow, this company introduced numerous innovations in the area of lithography optics for microchip manufacture to the market, including the Starlith 1700i, which uses both the immersion method – a procedure whereby the air between the last lens element and the surface of the wafer is replaced by a fluid – and lens and mirror systems simultaneously. In 2006, a new plant was officially opened in Oberkochen. It is the most modern development and production center for lithography optics in the world. Starlith 19xxi, produced from 2007, became a major success not only in the history of the Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology business group, but also at ZEISS overall, becoming the Group's highest-earning product. 2012 heralded the transition of EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) optics into serial production – a new era of optical lithography.

In 1901 the collaboration with the Swedish ophthalmologist and subsequent Nobel Prize winner Allvar Gullstrand began. In 1908, Moritz von Rohr calculated a point-focal imaging eyeglass lens that minimized the blurring that occurs when looking through lens edge areas, thus laying the foundation for the renowned Punktal® eyeglass lenses. Coinciding with the launch of Punktal®, the OPTO division – the predecessor of today’s Carl Zeiss Vision – was founded on 1 April 1912. The division of Germany into East and West leads to the new founding of Carl Zeiss in Oberkochen. Ongoing innovations, such as the Gradal® eyeglass lens, and continuous advancements culminated in the 2005 emergence and subsequent international rise of Carl Zeiss Vision International GmbH. It still continues to regularly revolutionize the field of eyeglass lenses, such as with the invention of Individual® FrameFit® or the next generation of vision: i.Scription®.