Ottomar Anschütz

Ottomar Anschütz (May 16, 1846 in Lissa/Prussia (today Leszno/Poland) - May 30, 1907 in Berlin) was an inventor, photographer, chronophotographer and significant contributor to the history of cinema.

He invented 1/1000th of a second shutter. He invented the "electrotachyscope" in 1887: a disk of 24 glass diapositives, manually powered, and illuminated by a sparking spiral Geissler tube, used by a single viewer, or projected to a small group.

In 1887 Anschütz developed the Projecting Electrotachyscope, in 1891 a slightly smaller, powered version, the "Electrical Schnellseher" (i.e. quick viewer), was being manufactured by Siemens & Halske in Berlin, used in a public arcade and was displayed at the International Electrotechnical Exhibition in Frankfurt. Nearly 34,000 people paid to see it at the Berlin Exhibition Park in summer 1892 also Strand, London and at the1893 Chicago World's Fair.

His famous 1884 albumen photography of storks inspired aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal's experimental gliders in the late 1880s.

External links

• Biography
• "Schnellseher" and "Electrotachyscope"
• photography of storks and moving pictures of the flight of a crane in his "Schnellseher" (quick-viewer)
• Photographs of Lilienthal's flights in 1893/94