A Futuristic Zeiss Ikon Barometer Joins the Collection
A striking 1933 Zeiss Ikon table barometer has been added to the collection together with an expanded history of Zeiss Ikon and Carl Zeiss.
The collection has been enriched by one of the most remarkable German table barometers of the early 1930s — the Zeiss Ikon Modernist Open-Frame Desk Barometer, dating from around 1933.
With its mirror-polished chrome base, transparent scale panel, radically simplified geometry, and concealed mechanism, the instrument is a superb example of interwar German industrial design. Its appearance combines elements of Art Deco, Neue Sachlichkeit, and functionalist modernism, while its unusual construction places the aneroid mechanism in the base and transmits its motion upward to the pointer through a slender rod-and-chain system.
The design was protected in the United States in 1932 as a Zeiss Ikon table barometer and is associated with engineer Heinrich Jacob, whose work linked the earlier C. P. Goerz tradition with the new Zeiss Ikon era.
Alongside the new catalogue entry, the website now also features a substantially expanded history of Zeiss Ikon and Carl Zeiss, tracing the development of the companies, their industrial background, the role of the former Goerz works, and the relationship between optical, photographic, and precision-instrument production.