Emanuel Goldberg

Emanuel Goldberg (Hebrew: עמנואל גולדברג; Yiddish: עמנואל גאָלדבערג; Russian: Эмануэль Гольдберг; 31 August 1881 – 13 September 1970) was an Israeli physicist and inventor. He was born in Moscow and moved first to Germany and later to Israel. He described himself as "a chemist by learning, physicist by calling, and a mechanic by birth." He contributed a wide range of theoretic and practical advances relating to light and media and was the founding head of Zeiss Ikon, the famous photographic products company in Dresden, Germany. His inventions include microdots, the Kinamo movie camera, the Contax 35 mm camera, a very early search engine, and equipment for sensitometry.

Goldberg was born in Moscow on 31 August 1881 (19 August 1881 in the Old Style, Julian calendar, sometimes given in error as 1 September) the son of Grigorii Ignat'evich Goldberg, a distinguished Colonel (Polkovnik) in the Tsar's military medical corps and his wife Olga Moiseevna Grodsenka. Earlier interested in engineering, he studied Chemistry at the University of Moscow and at several German universities, and remained in Germany after 1904 to avoid antisemitism in Russia. In 1906 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig for research at the Institute for Physical Chemistry, led by Wilhelm Ostwald on the kinetics of photochemical reactions. After a year as assistant to Adolf Miethe in the Photochemistry Laboratory at the Technical University in Charlottenburg, Berlin, he became head of the photographic department of the Royal Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookcraft, in Leipzig from 1907 to 1917.

In 1917, Goldberg was recruited by the Carl Zeiss Stiftung to become a director of its photographic products subsidiary Ica (Internationale Camera Aktien Gesellschaft) in Dresden where he introduced the spring-driven Kinamo movie camera. In 1926 a "Fusion" of four leading photographic firms (Contessa, Ernemann, Ica and Goerz) formed Zeiss Ikon under Goldberg's leadership until he was kidnapped by Nazis in 1933 and fled to Paris. After four years working for Zeiss subsidiaries in France, Goldberg moved to Palestine in 1937 where he established a laboratory, later called Goldberg Instruments, which became the Electro-Optical Industries ("El-Op") in Rehovot. A photograph taken 1943 by John Phillips for Life Magazine shows Goldberg in his workshop in Palestine. He retired in 1960 but continued his research and died in Tel Aviv on 13 September 1970.

Goldberg patented improved methods for electroplating zinc on iron in 1902 and published numerous technical papers on improved printing techniques, reducing moiré effects in half-tone printing, photoengraving and other topics. In 1910 he became well known for an improved method for making neutral gelatin wedges ("Goldberg wedge") that was widely used in sensitometry and the Densograph [de], an instrument that greatly reduced the labor required to measure the characteristic curves of photographic emulsions.

At Ica, foreseeing a growing market in amateur and semi-professional movies, he designed an extremely compact 35 mm movie camera, the Kinamo, introduced in 1921 with a spring motor attachment added in 1923 to allow flexible handheld filming. Goldberg made films of himself and his family as promotional shorts and, in 1927, a skiing drama, "Ein Sprung . . . Ein Traum." The Kinamo was used by Joris Ivens and other avant-garde and documentary filmmakers in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In 1925 Goldberg demonstrated and published a technique for making microdot (Mikrat nach Goldberg) at a resolution equivalent to the text 50 complete Bibles per square inch. This invention has been widely attributed to a mythical "Professor Zapp" based on J. Edgar Hoover's erroneous article in the April 1946 Reader's Digest, probably a confusion with Kurt Zapp who trained German spies in microdot photography during the Second World War. In 1937, Goldberg presented a paper at the World Congress of Universal Documentation on an early copying camera he had invented.

At Ica and Zeiss Ikon, Goldberg was involved in many innovations and led the design of famous Contax 35 mm still camera.

Goldberg was best known for his extensive studies in sensitometry summarized in his book Der Aufbau des photographischen Bildes (1922) and the "Goldberg Condition" (Goldberg Bedingung), a design principle for high quality reproduction in two stage, negative-positive photographic processes better known in English as "the gamma rule."