Ethnicity and Name
The ethnicity of Petzval is disputed. According to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences:
"The Austrians declared Petzval to having been an Austrian, the Czechs tried to prove his Bohemian origin, the Slovaks claiming to the fact that the County of Szepes, where Petzval was born, is now in Slovakia, so he must have been a Slovak." —Hungarian Academy of Sciences,Petzval was an ethnic Czech. He was born in Szepesbéla / Zipser Bela, in the multi-ethnic Kingdom of Hungary within the Austrian Empire (today Spišská Belá, Slovakia) as the son of a German schoolteacher. Petzval's ancestors, on his fathers side, came from (the present-day) Czech Republic, which then was part of the Austrian empire. Petzvals great grandfather, Frantisek Pecival, was a teacher in Lodenice, Bohemia, Austrian Empire, now in the Czech Republic.
The family name Pecival is Slavic and means: lazy. Grandfather emigrated to Hungary and changed and Germanized his name from Ján Krititel Pecival to Ján Fridrich Petzval. The original spelling of his father's name was Ján Krtitel Pecival. In 1801, his father married the Zipser-German Zuzana Kreutzmann, who was born in Szepesbéla, Kingdom of Hungary, a daughter of the previous teacher at the same school in Zipser Bela. The couple brought up six children: Gustáv Adolf (1800–1803), who died prematurely; Nestor Aemilianus (1804–1806); Jozef Maximilián; Petrol Baltazár (1809–1889); and three daughters. In 1810, the family moved to Késmárk (today Kežmarok) and in 1819 to Leutschau (today Levoča). Magyars, Germans and Slavs all lay claim on Petzvál.
Petzval's entire family shared an aptitude for technology. His father worked as a teacher at the evangelical school in Zipser Bela, as well as an organist in Zipser Bela and later in Käsmark. He was also a conductor and a geodesist in Lőcse. He had a reputation as an outstanding musician and composer, who was also gifted mechanically. In 1824, he was awarded two patents: one for improvements to the pendulum clock and the other for a "polygraph" (typewriter). Petzval's brother, Petrol Baltazár Petzval, was a well-respected mathematician, engineer and astronomer.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Petzval