In 1913, founder of the Deutsches Museum (German Museum) in Munich, Oskar von Miller, had an idea for an apparatus that would depict the apparent motions of the sun, moon, and planets along with those of the stars. He soon asked ZEISS for suggestions concerning this kind of a planetarium, but World War I interrupted things.
Walther Bauersfeld, member of the Carl Zeiss Jena Board of Management, after unveiling the new design for a projection planetarium in March 1919, began working with the employees under him to flesh out the details. The long-awaited moment finally arrived in October 1923 when the artificial sky lit up in the Deutsches Museum for the first time, far exceeding expectations. On 7 May 1925, the ZEISS Planetarium in the Deutsches Museum in Munich began operation. Subsequent developments ranged further to Model IX and projectors for small and medium dome sizes.
Later, ZEISS equipped its planetariums with computer-aided control systems and developed fiber optics to depict the night skies more brilliantly than ever. The evolution of ZEISS planetariums, which can now be found all over the world, eventually led to the VELVET video projector – featuring superior contrast for perfect full-dome projection and to the UNIVIEW software suite for all types of digital projection content.