Joseph Petzval
Joseph Petzval's grave
Josef Max Petzval was born on January 6, 1807, in Spisska Bela, Presov, Slovakia. His father married the Zipser-German Susanne Kreutzmann, who was born in Szepesbéla, Kingdom of Hungary. The couple brought up six children. In 1810, the family moved to Kesmark (today Kežmarok, Slovakia) and in 1819 to Locse (today Levoca, Slovakia).
Joseph Petzval attended elementary school in Kesmark, and began his secondary school studies in Kesmark and Podolin (now Podolínec, Slovakia). On 1 October 1819, he returned to his family in Locse, and entered high school.
After finishing high school, Joseph Petzval decided to move to the Institutum Geometricum, the engineering faculty of the Pester University. Before that, he had to complete a two-year lyceum, which he attended from 1823 to 1825 in Kassa (today Košice, Slovakia).
In addition to his Slovak, Joseph Petzval was able to speak perfectly in Czech, German, and Hungarian. With his father's assistance, he also learned French and English.
In 1835 Josef Max Petzval became a professor of higher mathematics at the University of Budapest, and in 1837 he took on a similar position at the University of Vienna, which he occupied until 1884. He published more than ninety papers on mathematics, optics, and acoustics as a result of his scientific work.
Josef Max Petzval moved into a rented abandoned monastery at Kahlenberg mountain. He founded his own glass-sharpening workshop there. His lenses became world-famous because he was also a skillful lens sharpener and precision mechanic.
In 1877, he stopped lecturing, withdrew to a monastery on Kahlenberg, and became a hermit. He died in Vienna in 1891, nearly forgotten, embittered, and destitute. His grave is in the Viennese central cemetery.
In 1840 Josef Max Petzval calculated the Petzval objective, the first fast photographic lens, with an aperture of 1:3.5 and a focal length of 150mm. This lens reduced exposure time by 90 percent and marked the beginning of the photographic optic. The Voigtlander Company in Vienna manufactured the lens for use in the all-metal daguerreotype camera introduced in 1841, but later Josef Max Petzval gave production rights to the firm of Dietzler in Vienna and others. He also designed a lens for landscape and reproduction work, which was produced in 1857 under the name of Orthoskop.
(German Edition)
1843Quotations: "I defeated the light, I have it firmly in hand because there is much darkness in the world too."
Josef Max Petzval was an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1873), an honorary member of the Union of the Czech mathematicians and physicists (1881), carriers of the French Charles Chevalier Platinmedaille, and others).
Josef Max Petzval was a good sportsman and rider. As a young child, he often traveled with his family to the High Tatras, and was also a dedicated athlete. In Vienna, he was for a long time the best fencer and ring fighter in the city. He also inherited an excellent talent for music from his father. Allegedly, while he was a lecturer in Vienna, he always rode to his lectures on a black Arabian horse.
In 1869, at the age of 62, Josef Max Petzval married his housekeeper, but she died four years later.
Jan Fridrich Pecval worked as a teacher at the evangelical school in Szepesbéla, as well as an organist in Szepesbela and later in Kesmark. He was also a conductor and a geodesist in Locse. He had a reputation as an outstanding musician and composer, who was also gifted mechanically. In 1824, he was awarded two patents: one for improvements to the pendulum clock and the other for a "polygraph" (typewriter).
(1800-1803), died prematurely
(1804-1806)
(1807-1891)
(1809-1889)
