Carl Bamberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Carl Wilhelm Anton Bamberg (born July 12, 1847 in Kranichfeld , † June 4, 1892 in Berlin ) was a German mechanic and entrepreneur .

Life

The parent company in the Berliner Bundesallee

Carl Bamberg was the son of the textile worker and self-taught watchmaker Heinrich Bamberg. He received his education 1862-1866 at Carl Zeiss in Jena and attended at the local University and lectures, the physicist Ernst Abbe and Hermann Schaeffer . After completing his apprenticeship, he initially remained an assistant at Zeiss until, with the help of Abbe, he was admitted to study without the Abitur. He took two semesters at the University of Jena, among others with Ernst Haeckel and Karl Snell. In 1869 Bamberg moved to Berlin and became an assistant to Eduard Sprenger and then to Pistor & Martins, the leading mechanical workshop in Berlin at the time. In 1870 he enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelms University and heard lectures from Wilhelm Foerster , Georg Adolf Erman , Heinrich Wilhelm Dove and Johann Christian Poggendorff .

In 1871 he founded his own company at Linienstraße 158. With 3,000  thalers from his future father-in-law as start-up capital, he ordered grinding and lathes he had designed himself from mechanical engineers, with which he set up his workshop. His first work was a cathetometer that Wilhelm Foerster ordered for the Berlin observatory . However, Bamberg mainly produced planimeters at first , which sold well. Soon he received his first orders from the Imperial Navy , for which he subsequently manufactured numerous nautical and magnetic devices. In 1873 he was also given the task of inspecting the Admiralty's scientific collection. Bamberg is considered to be the creator of the swimming compass, which was able to compensate for the vibrations on steam ships better than conventional dry compasses. In 1878 he set up his first time ball station in Wilhelmshaven , which was followed by others.

Bamberg's economic situation was so good in 1874 that he was able to marry his long-term fiancée Emma Roux, daughter of the fencing master at the University of Jena , Friedrich Wilhelm Roux , on April 26, 1874. The couple had two sons, the eldest son Ernst Wilhelm Julius Bamberg died in childhood.

Bamberg equipped the Venus transit expedition of 1874 with astronomical equipment. In the same year he received the order for a large equatorial for the Düsseldorf observatory , which was followed by others for the Jena observatory and the Urania Berlin observatory . Carl Bamberg's workshops for precision mechanics and optics were founded in 1888 at Bundesallee 87-88 (formerly: Kaiserallee 39). With a universal transit he delivered , Karl Friedrich Küstner was able to prove the polar movement in 1888 . A masterpiece among astronomical instruments of the company is 12 inches - telescope , the Carl Bamberg 1889 for the Berlin Urania made and now in the dome of the Wilhelm-Foerster Observatory is located in Berlin. With its help, the Berlin moon atlas was recorded in the 1960s .

Bamberg's collaboration with Siegfried Czapski was very fruitful . Czapski did his doctorate under Hermann von Helmholtz and was very interested in technical optics . On July 1, 1884, he joined the Bamberg company and carried out the test measurements on the large circular dividing machine that was in work . Even after he went to Jena as Abbe's assistant in 1885, he carried out the calculation of lenses for Bamberg .

Bamberg's grave in the Schöneberg III cemetery

Bamberg was a founding member of the Berlin Mechanics and Opticians Association . His successor organization, the German Society for Mechanics and Optics , he represented together with Rudolf Fuess in the commission for the establishment of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt , of which he was a member of the board of trustees until his death. He was co-founder and editor of the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenkunde .

Carl Bamberg died in Berlin at the beginning of June 1892 at the age of 44. The burial took place in the Friedenau cemetery in Stubenrauchstrasse (grave location: 7-33 / 34/35). In 1984 the Berlin Senate decided to dedicate the last resting place of Carl Bamberg for twenty years as an honorary grave for the State of Berlin . After this deadline, the Senate decided in November 2005 not to extend the dedication.

The company was initially continued by his wife Emma Bamberg until his son Paul Adolf Bamberg (1874–1946) took over management in 1904 . In 1912 Bamberg's nephew and son-in-law Max Roux (1886–1946) joined the management team. In the decades that followed, he managed the company, from which Askania Werke AG emerged after the purchase of Otto Toepfer & Sohn and the merger with Centralwerkstatt Dessau .

literature

Web links

Commons : Carl Bamberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Jörg Zaun: Astronomical instruments from Berlin and Potsdam workshops (PDF; 471 kB). In: Meeting reports of the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin 103, 2009, pp. 77–94.
  2. ↑ Helmut Winz: It was in Schöneberg / From 700 years of Schöneberg history. Schöneberg district office of Berlin (ed.), Berlin 1964, p. 118.
  3. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 684.
  4. ^ Template - for information - honorary graves of the State of Berlin . Berlin House of Representatives, printed matter 15/4601 of December 27, 2005, pp. 4–5. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Bamberg, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bamberg, Johann Carl Wilhelm Anton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mechanic
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Crane field
DATE OF DEATH June 4, 1892
Place of death Berlin