Bregenz water car

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A prototype of a watercraft presented to the public by Carl Bitz in 1917 was called the Bregenz Water Car . According to an article in the Vorarlberger Volksfreund from September 22, 1917, it is said to have been a raft with a body screwed on it. The author of the article described the watercraft as "unusable" from a technical-maritime-nautical point of view.

description

The vehicle presented by Carl Bitz, then technical director of Elektra Bregenz in Bregenz, on September 8, 1917 in front of a large crowd in the port of Bregenz , Vorarlberg , Austria , consisted of a completely closed, angular car body with a nose tip and three air-filled Floats (floats) in torpedo shape . The two main floats attached to the side of the car body were about five meters long and 50 cm in diameter and thickened from the front (bow) to the stern (drive) and should therefore have a particularly suitable shape for movement in the water, reducing the energy expenditure when moving would be reduced. The smaller float, centered on the bow of the vehicle, with a length of about four meters and a diameter of about 25 cm was used for steering and was almost completely submerged in the water.

The water vehicle was powered by a 16 HP (around 11.7 kW ) petrol engine located in the bow tip via a ship's propeller at the stern and thus reached a speed of around 2.7 knots (around 5 km / h ) during the test drive .

Because of this special design of the water vehicle, there was no launching , but the vehicle was hoisted into the Bregenz harbor basin with a crane. The vehicle was intended exclusively for operation in the water and could not drive out of the water itself.

The first splash down and the tests served to determine the center of gravity and the position of the water vehicle in the water. Neither the engine nor the other mechanism were permanently installed in a working condition. It turned out that the bow of the water vehicle was too deep in the water. As far as is known, no further attempts were made and nothing is known about the fate of the prototype.

According to a newspaper report, a patent application should have been made. However, searches at the Federal Institute for Intellectual Property and the Austrian Patent Office do not reveal any entries in the registers there. Under certain circumstances, the patent application by Carl Bitz was withdrawn before the first publication in the patent gazette or it was rejected, which is why there could no longer be any documents or entries. The attempt was cited in the Vorarlberger Volksfreund by the author of the article as an example for the products "that unfortunate love of the inventors" for the connection of motor vehicles and motor boats, which were "the curse of all compromises". united.

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  1. ↑ a b water car. In:  Vorarlberger Volksfreund , September 22, 1917, p. 6 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / vvf
  2. ↑ a b Willi Rupp: the Bregenz "water car" , vol.at of December 27, 2017.
  3. ^ Reminder of the Bregenz water car , Vorarlberger Nachrichten of December 28, 2017, p. A6.
  4. ^ E-mail information from the Austrian Patent Office to user Asurnipal from February 16, 2018.