Adolf Miethe

Adolf Miethe (German: [ˈmiːtə]; 25 April 1862, Potsdam – 5 May 1927, Berlin) was a German scientist, lens designer, photochemist, photographer, author and educator. He co-invented the first practical photographic flash and made important contributions to the progress of practical color photography.¹

Early life

Adolf Miethe grew up in a middle-class family. His father was a chocolate manufacturer and city councillor in Potsdam. After studying physics, chemistry and astronomy in Berlin, he moved to Göttingen, where in 1889 he received his doctorate for a thesis on the actinometry of photographic astronomic fixed star exposures.

Career

In 1887 he co-invented (with Johannes Gaedicke) the photographic magnesium powder flash-light. After earning his doctorate, he worked for Edmund Hartnack's optical workshop in Potsdam designing microscope objectives. In 1891, after the death of Hartnack, he moved to Rathenow and took a job with the optical company Schulze & Barthels, where he developed telescopes, binoculars, and one of the first tele lenses for cameras. In 1894 he went to Voigtländer & Sohn in Braunschweig, where he held the post of technical director and also worked on improving rifle scopes. In 1899 he succeeded Hermann Wilhelm Vogel at Technische Hochschule Berlin (today Technische Universität Berlin) as professor of photography, photochemistry, and spectral analysis.

Miethe was the designer of a camera for color photography,² the first photographic product made by the Berlin cabinetmaker Wilhelm Bermpohl. Introduced to the public in 1903, it produced sets of three separate black-and-white images on glass plates by making a series of three photographs of the subject through red, green and blue color filters, a method of color photography first proposed by James Clerk Maxwell. These were used to reconstitute the full original range of color by projecting transparent positives made from them through similar filters and exactly superimposing the images on the projection screen (), or by making three prints consisting of transparent pigment or dye images in the and superimposing those to make a single full-color transparency or print on paper (). They were also used to prepare printing plates for illustrating books, periodicals and other mechanically printed media, the only form in which early color photographs were likely to be seen by the general public.