Theodor Scheimpflug File online

Imagine you're back in the year 1900. The automobiles look like carriages without a horse. Most people have never seen one in real life. It is only a couple of years ago that moving images were projected on a wall and if you want to see one, you have to go to a big city a have the luck that a movie theatre is part of the fair.
There are still many white areas on the map of the earth. Flying is only for the birds or the happy few people that are so rich they can afford to fill a balloon with gas and so adventurous they dare to step into the basket.

In this time an Austrian naval officer with the name Theodor Scheimpflug is working hard to realise his dream, his vision. He is building a 8-lens panoramic plate camera and is experimenting with kites to lift the camera some 1000 or 2000 metres in the air. With an electrical device he triggers the 8 shutters and takes 8 photos at the same time of a area of 100 square kilometres or more. Then he invents an instrument to correct the perspective of the photos, so that every object in it is depicted at the same scale, regardless of the angle of the camera when the photo was taken. When that is done he puts the 8 pictures together to form one areal view. It is as accurate as a map. You can even use it as a map.

If you want to read all about it, go to my Theodor Scheimpflug File. There I have gathered all his articles and all the important articles that were written since his death in 1911. It is for the first time that this information can be found in one place. Some of it is available elsewhere in the deep web, but much was scanned from the original paper sources and is available in digital form for the first time.
The Theodor Scheimpflug File also contains more than 40 photographs and illustrations, depicting his life, world and work.
With this file I want to commemorate the 100th dying day of Hauptmann Scheimpflug (August 22). Some photographers still know the Scheimpflug rule, but very few people know what he really achieved. I hope the file will help to change that.
I have spent many hours searching for the documents and photographs, but without the help of some people in Austria I never would have succeeded in bringing it all together. I want to thank them all very much for their kind help.