Carl Eduard Kraft

Carl Eduard Kraft (* 1795 in Halle (Saale) ; † 1880 in Vienna) was an Austrian imperial-royal state-privileged mechanic in Vienna .

Life

Kraft opened a workshop in Vienna in 1823 for the manufacture of mathematical and physical instruments and apparatus and employed twenty assistants in 1841, including Siegfried Marcus from 1852 to 1854 .

Kraft is generally considered to be the creator of a useful field measuring table. E. Kraft & Sohn supplied measuring instruments for the construction of the Austrian railways and to Alois Negrelli von Moldelbe for the planning of the Suez Canal (around 1856).

He was entrusted with the development of a wind socket pumping machine which, as was later found out, could also be used to liquefy gases. An anemometer constructed according to Robinson's principle had been in use at the kk Centralanstalt für Meteorologie since the end of July 1865 . “In the burned down house on the Wieden” he also offered an ophthalmoscope . They constructed and the total station by Josef Stern . In the 1870s the company moved to Theresanumgasse 27, where it still existed at the turn of the century. With the collaboration of Moritz Ritter von Pichler (1847–1897) they carried out the Thompson indicator from 1880 onwards.

Kraft became an appraiser and was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit with the crown .

His son Friedrich Wilhelm (* 1825 in Vienna) joined his father's company and represented the Lower Austrian Trade Association at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 .

literature

• Leaves for the history of technology , volumes 53–55; Research Institute for the History of Technology in Vienna
• Caminada: pioneers of alpine topography: the history of Swiss map art