Emanuel Goldberg

Emanuel Goldberg was born in 1881 in Moscow

Goldberg was born in Moscow in 1881. His father was a colonel in the medical corps of the Russian army. He was interested in engineering early on.

He studied chemistry in Moscow and then in Germany, where he stayed to escape antisemitism in Russia. In 1906 he earned a doctorate in Leipzig under Wilhelm Ostwald, working on photochemical reactions.

From 1907 to 1917 he headed the photography department of the Royal Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig. He developed the Goldberg wedge for sensitometry and, in 1925, a method for making microdots. In 1917 he joined Ica in Dresden, where he introduced the Kinamo movie camera.

In 1926 four camera firms merged into Zeiss Ikon under his leadership, and he led the design of the Contax camera. In 1933 he was kidnapped by the Nazis and fled to Paris, where he worked for Zeiss subsidiaries.

In 1937 he moved to Palestine and set up a precision instruments laboratory, which later became El-Op in Rehovot. He retired in 1960 but kept doing research. He died in Tel Aviv in 1970.