Joseph Von Fraunhofer was born in 1787, and grew up the
youngest of ten children, and mired in poverty. His family came from a
tradition of glassmaking. At the age of 11, the young Joseph was orphaned, and managed to find an apprenticeship in Munich with a
glassmaker and lens grinder. In 1801, an accident occurred which buried him
deep in building rubble. This accident turned out to be a crucial turning point
in the young man’s life. The salvation of Fraunhofer caught the attention of royal
patrons in the prince’s court. One of these patrons was named Joseph Utzschneider, who also had an
interest in optics. Utzschneider supplied the young man with money, books and
friendship. Having never before had a formal education, Fraunhofer quickly
developed an avid interest in self-education. The money supplied from both his
apprenticeship and Utzschneider’s generosity allowed him to open up his own
glass cutting and polishing machine. During this time he also became employed
at Utzschneider’s optic company.
Over time, Fraunhofer
honed his skills in glassmaking, and created new grinding techniques of his
own, as well as building his own machine. By the age of 22, he had become the
director of glass manufacturing in Utzschneider’s company. The company quickly
became the most reliable for anything optics related, and became the leader in
quality for all of Europe. This was entirely due to Fraunhofer’s development of
a scientific method for testing telescopes and other glass products. During
this time Fraunhofer also developed several improved optical devices.
Fraunhofer was particularly interested in spectroscopy, and made many devices
that aided in further progressing understanding of light wavelengths. For example,
he was the first to discover that the dark lines that often appeared when light
shone through a prism were inherent parts of light, and these lines eventually
came to be called Fraunhofer Lines. As he became more and more of an expert on
the properties of light, he also began to develop theories of diffraction,
which would later become laws. Using this knowledge, he created objects that
could make extremely precise measurements. In fact, Fraunhofer created a
diamond with grooves smaller than .003 millimeters to diffract light into
incredibly precise wavelengths. All of his work eventually came back to
telescopes or microscopes, and all his scientific curiosity was driven by the
desire to better the instruments he created. However, Fraunhofer caught a case
of tuberculosis in 1826 that would result in his death, one depressingly
premature for such a brilliant mind. Fraunhofer, while not on the front lines
of astronomical pioneering, was certainly a driving force behind the movement,
and left helped his field progress enormously.
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