August von Loehr (engineer)

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August Ritter von Loehr
(bronze plaque, 1896)

August Ritter von Loehr (born May 5, 1847 in Venice , † November 21, 1917 in Vienna ) was an Austrian railway engineer and collector of minerals and coins.

Act

August von Loehr, son of the railway architect Moritz von Loehr , studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Vienna and joined the Corps Alemannia there in 1865 . From 1869 he worked as an engineer for the Northern Railway Company in Vienna. He earned numerous services both in the improvement of technology and in the administration of society and retired in 1908 as central inspector and councilor . For many years he was chairman of the Club of Austrian Railway Officials and, associated with it, editor of the Austrian Railway Journal .

In his spare time he was occupied with precious stones and built up an important collection. In 1901 he founded the Vienna Mineralogical Society (now the Austrian Mineralogical Society ) together with the then director of the Mineralogical-Petrographic Department at the Natural History Museum, Friedrich Berwerth . This society turned not only to the specialist mineralogists, but also to laymen and collectors interested in mineralogy. From 1901 until his death he was on the board of the company. His collection was acquired by the Natural History Museum in Vienna .

He also collected and researched Austrian medals as well as money tokens and medals from and about the railway industry, this collection is now in the Railway Museum. He was a co-founder of the Austrian Society for the Promotion of Small Sculpture and Medal Art . As an enthusiastic amateur photographer, he was also involved in the Vienna Camera Club , published in the Wiener Photographischen Blätter and built widely used magnesium flash lamps.

August von Loehr invented a self-winding pocket watch in 1875, for which he received German patent no.1903 on January 10, 1878. In 1878, von Loehr registered an English patent for a pocket watch movement with an automatic winding mechanism using a pendulum flywheel (pedometer principle, step counter principle). He left pocket watches with this work in the London firm Selfwinding Watch Co. finished. Two housing styles were used: round and square. The latter was made by the Swiss watch company Hahn Frères & Cie. made in Landeron. Von Loehr's pocket watch was the only automatic watch of this type that achieved a certain distribution. About 4000 pieces of the round version were made and sold. Loehr had the elevator and the housing bracket protected by patents DE 1903, DE 3939, DE 14939, GB 1473 (1880), GB 4781 (1880) in Germany and England.

August von Loehr was a founding member and first president of the "Association of permanently sworn experts and appraisers" from which the " main association of generally sworn and judicially certified experts " in Austria arose.

His son was the numismatist and money historian August Ritter von Loehr (1882–1965).

Fonts

  • Money tokens, tokens, commemorative coins and medals from and for railways , Vienna 1896
  • Viennese medalists. Schroll, Vienna 1899, ( digitized ; addendum. Ibid 1902).
  • Mineralogical pocket book of the Vienna Mineralogical Society. Vienna Mineralogical Society, Vienna 1911.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 131 , 14

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Loehr, August von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Löhr, August Ritter von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Railway engineer and mineral and coin collector
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Venice
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1917
Place of death Vienna