Everything about Joseph Von Fraunhofer totally explained
Joseph von Fraunhofer (
March 6,
1787 –
June 7,
1826) was a
German optician. He is known for the discovery of the dark absorption lines known as Fraunhofer lines in the Sun's spectrum, and for making excellent optical glass and achromatic telescope objectives.
Biography
Fraunhofer was born in
Straubing. He became an
orphan at the age of 11, and he started working as an apprentice to a harsh glassmaker named Philipp Anton Weichelsberger. In
1801 the workshop in which he was working collapsed and he was buried in the rubble. The rescue operation was led by Maximilian IV Joseph,
Prince Elector of
Bavaria (the future
Maximilian I Joseph). The prince entered Fraunhofer's life, providing him with books and forcing his employer to allow the young Joseph Fraunhofer time to study.
After eight months of study, Fraunhofer went to work at the Optical Institute at
Benediktbeuern, a secularised Benedictine monastery devoted to glass making. There he discovered how to make the world's finest optical glass and invented incredibly precise methods for measuring dispersion. In
1818 he became the director of the Optical Institute. Due to the fine optical instruments he'd developed,
Bavaria overtook
England as the centre of the optics industry. Even the likes of
Michael Faraday were unable to produce glass that could rival Fraunhofer's.
His illustrious career eventually earned him an honorary doctorate from the
University of Erlangen in
1822. In
1824, he was awarded the order of merit, became a noble, and made an honorary citizen of
Munich. Like many glassmakers of his era who were poisoned by
heavy metal vapours, Fraunhofer died young, in
1826 at the age of 39. His most valuable glassmaking recipes are thought to have gone to the grave with him.
Scientific research
In
1814, Fraunhofer invented the
spectroscope, and discovered 574 dark lines appearing in the solar spectrum. These were later shown to be atomic absorption lines, as explained by
Kirchhoff and
Bunsen in
1859. These lines are still called
Fraunhofer lines in his honour.
He also invented the
diffraction grating and in doing so transformed
spectroscopy from a qualitative art to a quantitative science by demonstrating how one could measure the wavelength of light accurately. He found out that the spectra of
Sirius and other first-magnitude stars differed from each other and from the sun, thus founding stellar spectroscopy.
Ultimately, however, his primary passion was still practical optics, once noting that "In all my experiments I could, owing to lack of time, pay attention to only those matter which appeared to have a bearing upon practical optics." In the early 1990's a firm that designed and built refracting telescopes was named in his honor Fraunhofer Systems Company since the telescopes were based on his design but now the company is part of Burbank Optical Company.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Joseph Von Fraunhofer'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://joseph_von_fraunhofer.totallyexplained.com">Joseph von Fraunhofer Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
