Carl Lorenz (engineer)
Carl Lorenz , with full name Daniel Wilhelm Ferdinand Carl Lorenz (born July 6, 1844 in Hanover , † December 20, 1889 in Berlin ) was a German technician and industrialist.
The manufacturer of radio and telecommunications equipment C. Lorenz AG emerged from the telegraph construction company C. Lorenz , which he founded in 1880, and Standard Elektrik Lorenz AG (SEL) as its successor .
Life
Carl Lorenz was born in Hanover in 1844 as the son of the chamber musician and brass music composer Carl Daniel Lorenz. Nothing more is known about his youth. But he appears in the Berlin address book of 1870 in addition to his home address Alexanderplatz 2 as the owner of his own mechanical workshop at Oranienstrasse 156. However, he gave up this and on October 1, 1870 moved his home and work to Brandenburgstrasse. There, at number 45, the mechanic and industrialist Wilhelm Horn had just founded the Berlin International Telegraph Construction Company .
Horn had been the owner of the Telegraphenbauanstalt and pendulum clock factory Wilhelm Horn in Glashütte since 1862 . As a result of his acquaintance with Bethel Henry Strousberg , one of the most influential German industrialists of the time, he had won large orders to build telegraph equipment for private railway companies and had moved to the capital. Carl Lorenz and his younger brother Alfred worked together with Horn and in 1878 Carl was already a partner. The company, now at Hollmannstrasse 35, changed its name to Horn & Lorenz and Horn left the management to its partner for health reasons. In the same year, Lorenz separated from Wilhelm Horn.
On July 1, 1880, Carl Lorenz and his assistant Fritz Schlachte founded their own mechanical workshop that produced Morse and electromechanical devices. After arc lights were introduced in Berlin in 1878 and the incandescent lamp and electric train in 1879 , Carl Lorenz's entry in the Berlin address book was in 1880 as the owner of a telegraph construction company, a factory for electric light, electric railways, art and industry . He received his first order from the Berlin-Görlitzer Bahn, founded by Strousberg and completed in 1867. His younger brother Alfred joined them and became a workshop master in the growing company.
In October 1883, the company moved to Prinzessinnenstrasse 21 to expand, but in the night of December 3rd to 4th, 1883, it lost both the building and the machines in a fire that the fire brigade couldn't control because of frozen hoses could get. Three weeks later, operations were resumed with partially renovated and new machines at Prinzenstrasse 35. In October 1885, the company moved back to Prinzessinnenstrasse 21, where a four-storey transverse building had meanwhile been erected, the 3rd and 4th floors of which were fully occupied by Carl Lorenz, who took the opportunity to install steam-powered machines for the first time its production.
On December 20, 1889, Carl Lorenz died of influenza that was rampant in Berlin. For a while, his brother Alfred continued to run the company for his brother's widow and children. In the same year, however, the businessman Robert Held agreed with the widow to take over the C. Lorenz Telegraphenbauanstalt company for 50,000 marks.
Aftermath
Under the direction of Robert Held, C. Lorenz AG became a global company. After his death in 1930, Standard Elektrizitätsgesellschaft (SEG) , a subsidiary of the American International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT), took over the majority of the shares. At that time the company had around 2,700 employees and a share capital of 9.5 million Reichsmarks.
Under ITT , C. Lorenz AG took over G. Schaub Apparatebau-Gesellschaft mbH in Pforzheim, which was also founded in Berlin in 1921 . Devices produced from 1955 were sold under the name Schaub-Lorenz . In addition to radio and telecommunications technology, Lorenz also gained greater popularity as part of a brand name for entertainment electronics from radios, car radios, cassette recorders, loudspeaker boxes, world receivers to television sets. In 1958, C. Lorenz AG was merged with Standard Elektrik AG , to which the former Mix & Genest also belonged, to form Standard Elektrik Lorenz AG (SEL) . The new company, based in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, had grown to 33,000 employees and a turnover of 12.6 billion DM by 1976.
In the following years the company lost its size and importance. In 1988 the company was taken over by the French Alcatel and renamed Alcatel SEL AG in 1993 , so that Lorenz was included in the company name until 2006, at least through the abbreviation SEL. With the merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies to form the telecommunications supplier Alcatel-Lucent , the German subsidiaries of both companies were merged to form Alcatel-Lucent Deutschland AG , which at the end of 2014 only had around 1,800 employees. The name Lorenz is no longer used.
literature
- 50 Years of Lorenz 1880–1930 - Commemorative publication by C. Lorenz Aktiengesellschaft , Berlin-Tempelhof 1930.
- 75 years of Lorenz, 1880 to 1955 - commemorative publication by C. Lorenz Aktiengesellschaft Stuttgart , Stuttgart 1955.
- Ernst Erb: Radio catalog , volume 1. Siebert Verlag 1998. ISBN 978-3-88180-686-2
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Telegraph construction company and pendulum clock factory Wilhelm Horn . In: Watch-wiki.de, accessed on October 5, 2015
- ↑ Carl Lorenz . In: Bayern-Online.com, accessed on October 5, 2015
- ↑ Schaub Lorenz . In: Biesler's Radiofundgrube, accessed on October 5, 2015.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lorenz, Carl |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German engineer and entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 6, 1844 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hanover |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 20, 1889 |
| Place of death | Berlin |