Heinrich Wild at Carl Zeiss, Jena (1908-1919)

In the spring of 1908, Heinrich Wild moved his wife and 5 children to Jena, Germany and accepted employment with Carl Zeiss as manager of their new department, Geo Carl Zeiss.  Prior to this time, Zeiss had produced no geodetic instruments.

He first designed and fabricated instruments for leveling.  Later, transits and theodolites were produced.  His goals were to make available small, light weight, stable instruments that maintained their adjustments over long periods of time, and were easy to understand and operate.

These instruments were very successful and Wild was becoming well respected and recognized, world wide. 

During this time, Wild devised many new features and improvements such as:

• The anallactic telescope of constant length with internal focusing
• Device for centering the bubble on leveling-instruments by making apparent coincidence of its two ends as viewed in a prism
• Cylindrical steel main axis
• Dust-tight arrangement for foot screws
• The plane-parallel glass plate as an optical micrometer for geodetic instruments.  First applied to levels
• Divisions on an Invar band stretched by springs and attached to a
• precision leveling rod
  

At the close of the first World War in 1919, living conditions in Germany became very difficult.  Wild elected to return to Switzerland.  He resigned his permanent employment with Zeiss at this time and agreed to continue with them until 1921 as a contract consultant.

Zeiss Th1 (one of the instruments developed by H.Hild for Zeiss)

Zeiss Patente in denen Heinrich Wild als Erfinder aufgeführt ist:

• DRP-Nr.     Datum      
  Titel

• 216420    12.06.1907    
  Entfernungsmesser 
• 209008     30.12.1907    
  Winkelmeßinstrument mit einem monokularen Doppelmikroskop zum gleichzeitige Ablesen zweier um 180° auseinander liegender Stellen eines Teilkreises 
• 212905     31.07.1908    
  Fernrohr-Nivellierinstrument mit Horizontalspiegel und Winkelspiegelprisma oder mit Vertikalspiegel 
• 222754    05.08.1909     
  Röhrenlibelle mit einem Spiegelsystem, das die Bilder der beiden Blasenenden dicht beieinander entwirft 
• 224405     23.08.1909     
  Nivellierinstrument mit Reversionslibelle und einer Einrichtung, um diese Libelle auch in umgekehrter Richtung benutzen zu können 
• 231062     10.11.1909     
  Tachymeterfernrohr mit wesentlich unveränderlicher Größe und Lage des tachymetrischen Winkels 
• 365720     04.11.1914
  Entfernungsmesser mit Standlinie im Instrument, Zusatz zum Patent 302435 
• 90197     28.08.1920     
  Verschwenkungseinrichtung für Phototheodolit 
• 168316    28.08.1920     
  Theodolit mit entgegengesetzt laufenden Teilkreisbildern