Bernhard Schmidt facts for kids
Bernhard Woldemar Schmidt (born April 11, 1879, in Nargen, Estonia – died December 1, 1935, in Hamburg) was a brilliant Estonian optician. An optician is someone who designs and makes optical instruments like telescopes. In 1930, he invented the amazing Schmidt telescope. This special telescope fixed common problems found in older telescopes. It allowed astronomers to build very large, wide-angle cameras. These cameras could take pictures of the night sky quickly, which was a huge help for studying space.
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Growing Up in Estonia
Bernhard Schmidt was born and grew up on Naissaar, a small island near Tallinn (then called Reval). At that time, Estonia was part of the Russian Empire. Most people on the island spoke Swedish or Estonian, but Bernhard's family also spoke German. He was the oldest of six children.
Naissaar was a quiet island where people mostly fished or helped guide ships. Bernhard and his younger brother, August, had many adventures there. Bernhard was always curious, creative, and full of ideas. For example, when he was young, he built his own camera. He used a lens he bought and old accordion bellows. He took pictures of his home and family and even sold some of his photos. He also loved looking at the night sky and learning about constellations.
When Bernhard was 15, he had a serious accident. He was experimenting with gunpowder and an iron pipe. The pipe exploded, and he lost two fingers on his right hand. Doctors in Tallinn later had to remove his whole hand. This event made him more quiet and thoughtful, which people noticed about him later in life.
Early Career and Studies
Even after his accident, Bernhard quickly went back to inventing. He also took more photos and became very good at developing and printing them. In 1895, he moved to Tallinn and worked retouching photographs. Later, he worked for an electrical motor company and became skilled in drafting.
In 1901, he went to Gothenburg, Sweden, to study at the Chalmers University of Technology. Soon after, he moved to the University of Mittweida in Germany to continue his education.
Becoming an Optics Expert
During his studies, Bernhard's interest in astronomy and optics grew. He started grinding and polishing very precise mirrors for telescopes around 1901. He began selling his mirrors to amateur astronomers. By 1904, he was so good that professional astronomers in Germany noticed his work.
His business quickly became successful. Famous astronomers like Hermann Carl Vogel and Karl Schwarzschild realized how excellent Schmidt's mirrors were for their research.
Life in Mittweida
Between 1904 and 1914, Schmidt's business thrived, and he became very famous in Germany. He made some of the most difficult and precise mirrors ever attempted at that time. He also fixed and improved lenses from other famous optical companies. As his business grew, he hired several assistants. Schmidt even bought a car, which was very rare then, and hired a friend to drive it. He took impressive photos of the sun, moon, and planets using his own special equipment.
World War I brought an end to his success. Schmidt was arrested because Estonia was part of the Russian Empire, an enemy country. He was sent to a camp for about six months. After his release, he was still watched by the police, and some of his astronomy equipment was taken away. He tried to continue his business, but the war made the economy very bad. Scientists had no money for astronomy. Things did not get better after the war due to political problems and the need to pay war costs. By the mid-1920s, Schmidt's business was ruined, and he had to sell his remaining equipment as junk.
Moving to Bergedorf
From 1916, Schmidt had been in touch with Professor Richard Schorr. Schorr was the director of the Hamburg Observatory, located near Hamburg. Schorr was interested in Schmidt's special horizontal telescope. After the war, when Schmidt was struggling financially, he asked Schorr for work at the observatory. Schorr could only offer a little: Schmidt could live there for free and get a small fee for repair work. This was in 1926.
Schmidt didn't accept right away. He had invented other things, like a wind-powered propeller for boats, and hoped to make money from them. He also visited Estonia, which had become an independent country, to look for opportunities in optics.
None of these efforts worked out. By 1927, Schmidt's situation was so bad that he accepted Schorr's offer. He set up a workshop in the observatory's basement and began repairing the horizontal telescope. Between 1927 and 1929, Schmidt went on two solar eclipse trips with the Hamburg Observatory. On the second trip, to the Philippines, he told astronomer Walter Baade about his most important invention: the wide-angle reflective camera. This invention would change astronomy forever.
The Schmidt Camera: A Revolution in Astronomy
Astronomers had always wanted a way to photograph large areas of the sky quickly. They needed to map the universe and see huge structures. Regular telescopes at the time showed only small parts of the sky, usually 1 or 2 degrees wide. Imaging the whole sky with these telescopes took many years and a lot of effort. It was easy to miss large structures. Small camera lenses could see wide areas, but they couldn't capture faint, faraway objects. What was needed were large cameras that could see wide areas clearly and take pictures quickly.
Before Schmidt, large, wide-field telescopes had problems. While they showed sharp images in the middle, the images quickly became blurry away from the center. Stars looked stretched or like comets. This blurring was caused by optical errors called "coma" and "astigmatism." It was impossible to build a large, fast telescope without these errors.
Schmidt knew about these problems and had been thinking about solutions. He came up with a new and bold idea. He realized that by using a large spherically shaped mirror (instead of the usual paraboloid mirror) and a smaller opening placed at the mirror's center, he could get rid of coma and astigmatism. However, he would still have another error called spherical aberration, which also made images blurry.
Schmidt then realized he could fix spherical aberration by adding a thin, slightly curved lens. This lens, now called the "Schmidt corrector plate," was placed at the same center as the opening. This special lens has a complex shape that cancels out the spherical aberration from the mirror. This clever design allowed him to build a large camera that could take sharp pictures across a very wide area, more than 15 degrees wide. This meant astronomers could photograph large parts of the sky in just a few minutes, instead of hours.
His first camera had an opening about 360 mm (14.5 inches) wide. It is now in a museum at the Hamburg Observatory. Schmidt's way of combining different optical parts – a special mirror, an opening in a specific spot, and a "correction plate" – was groundbreaking. The "correction plate" was unlike anything seen before in telescope design. After Schmidt, many new telescope designs appeared that used similar ideas.
Later Years and Legacy
Schmidt built his first "Schmidtspiegel" (which became known as the Schmidt camera) in 1930. This invention caused excitement around the world. He used a very clever method called the "vacuum pan" method to make the difficult "corrector plate." This method involved carefully bending a glass plate with a vacuum and then polishing it flat. When the vacuum was released, the lens would spring into the special "Schmidt shape" needed for the camera. No one had ever made a lens this way before.
Schmidt published a short description of his invention in German. He offered to build his cameras for observatories. However, his publicity was limited, and his design was very new. Also, his invention came at the start of the Great Depression. No orders came in, and he continued to rely on Professor Schorr and the observatory for a small income. He built a larger camera in 1934 and also re-polished another large telescope.
Schmidt became ill in late November 1935 after a business trip. He passed away on December 1, 1935, in Hamburg, at age 56.
Personal Life and Impact
Schmidt never married or had children. Soon after his death, the idea of the Schmidt telescope became very popular, thanks to Walter Baade. In 1936, an 18-inch Schmidt telescope was built. Twelve years later, the famous 48-inch (122 cm) Samuel Oschin telescope Schmidt-telescope was built at Mount Palomar Observatory. This telescope produced a huge amount of new observations and information about space.
Later, in 1955, a large Schmidt telescope was built at Bergedorf. The 2-meter Schmidt telescope at the Karl Schwarzschild Observatory was built later and is still the largest Schmidt camera in the world. The Bergedorf Schmidt telescope was moved to Calar Alto Observatory in 1976.
Bernhard Schmidt is also the main character in the book Vastutuulelaev: Bernhard Schmidti romaan (Sailing Against the Wind) by Estonian author Jaan Kross. He is also featured in the opera An Enlightened Disciple of Darkness by Dominy Clements, which tells his life story.
See also
In Spanish: Bernhard Schmidt para niños
- List of astronomical instrument makers
- 1743 Schmidt
