The World’s First Planetarium Turns One Hundred

The World’s First Planetarium Turns One Hundred

The first presentations using a planetarium projector took place in 1923 in Jena, Germany, years before the first North American planetarium came into existence and twenty-nine years before a planetarium came to Evansville. While the Tri-State has enjoyed the benefit of a planetarium since 1952, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the modern planetarium projector. This event will be celebrated as a year-long, global series of events, targeting both the public and planetarians worldwide.

A planetarium is a device used to simulate the appearance and motions of the stars or planets in the night sky. The first planetariums date back to antiquity and were mechanical in design. It was not until one hundred years ago that the combination of a mechanical system with optically projected lights was employed to simulate celestial objects on a domed surface.

The central dates of the anniversary are as follows:

August 1923, the first partial, test demonstrations took place with the first modern planetarium projector, the Zeiss model 'Mark 1' at the Carl Zeiss factory in Jena, Germany.

September 1923, the 'Mark 1' projector became operational for the first time, at the Zeiss factory in Jena, Germany.

October 1923, the 'Mark 1' was first used for presentations in closed sessions at Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany.

May 1925, the first modern planetarium in the world debuted to public audiences at Deutsches Museum.

While many planetarium’s today (including our Koch Immersive Theater) are computer controlled and use digital projection devices, mechanical-optical devices like the one that first came to be in Jena, Germany, still exist today. Our museum employed two such devices of between 1952 and 2013. Goto in Japan and Zeiss in Germany still manufacture vastly updated versions of the Zeiss Mark 1 that had its earliest beginnings 100 years ago.

@glpasocial