Adolf Franke (electrical engineer)

Ludwig Adolf Constantin Georg Hermann Franke (born December 7, 1865 in Lingen , Kingdom of Hanover, † September 11, 1940 in Berlin ) was a German electrical engineer.

Life

Adolf Franke was the son of the director of the Lingen Oberschule and attended the grammar school in Celle . In a precision mechanical-electrical company he learned the basics of mechanics and low-voltage technology. From 1884 he studied physics and mathematics in Heidelberg and Berlin. In the winter semester of 1884/85 Franke joined the Leonensia student union in Heidelberg . He also conducted electrical engineering studies at the TH Hanover and was a scientific assistant at the telegraph engineering office of the Reichspost in Berlin. Here one began to scientifically investigate the electrical processes in telecommunications technology. In 1891 he received his doctorate from the TU Berlin. phil. with The electrical processes in telephone lines and equipment . With a self-developed electro-mechanical audio frequency dynamo Franke's machine , which was still in use for a long time, he took measurements on telephone lines. In 1892 he left the postal service and went to Urania-Säulengesellschaft as a senior engineer , where he became director two years later when it was converted to normal time (later telephone construction and normal time, see Tenovis ). In 1896 he moved to Siemens, where he was assistant to the physicist August Raps (1865–1920) in the Charlottenburg plant .

Here he first developed precision measuring devices, converted the purse printer into an electric remote printer and in 1912 designed Siemens high-speed telegraphs (up to 1000 characters / minute). With the advent of amplifier tubes from 1906, he researched the principles of high frequency technology . Together with Karl Ferdinand Braun , around 1903 he developed a Franke-Dönitz wave meter , the first frequency analyzer with which capacities , inductances , coupling factors , and attenuation could be determined at the same time .

In 1903 he became a deputy member of the Management Board at Siemens & Halske and in 1908 a full member of the Management Board. From 1921 to 1932 he was chairman of the board.

In 1922 he initiated the technical college for precision engineering . In the same year he was awarded TH Berlin-Charlottenburg , the honorary doctorate . Two years later he became an honorary senator of the TH Dresden .

literature

• Sigfrid von Weiher:  Franke, Adolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 344 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Richard Swinne: Adolf Franke. In: Journal for Technical Physics. Vol. 16, No. 12, 1935
• Sigfrid von Weiher: men of radio technology. VDE publishing house, Berlin / Offenbach 1983
• Wolfgang Ribbe, Wolfgang Schächen: The Siemensstadt [...]. Ernst & Son, Berlin 1985

Web links

• From the history of Siemens: Adolf Franke †
• Adolf Franke ( Memento from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) ( The Siemensstadt. A Lexicon of Siemensstadt in Berlin )