Carl Philipp Heinrich Pistor

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Carl Philipp Heinrich Pistor

Carl Philipp Heinrich Pistor (born January 3, 1778 in Berlin ; † April 2, 1847 there ) is known as the inventor and pioneer of optical telegraphy .

Live and act

Official in the Prussian postal service

Pistor joined the Prussian postal service in 1793 after completing his schooling. Until his retirement in 1813, he used the mathematical and astronomical knowledge he had acquired in the course of his activity to carry out an exact geographical determination of all the locations of the postal rates under his control. In the course of his career he finally reached the office of a Secret Postal Council .

Technician and Entrepreneur

Pistor had undergone a change from amateur to professional, which was not unusual for the times; he had developed from a lover of scientific instruments to a manufacturer of these instruments:

After retiring from civil service, Pistor founded a precision engineering workshop in Berlin in 1813 , which became famous in European observatories above all for its astronomical instruments .

Pistor had worked for years with the precision mechanic Karl Theodor Nathan Mendelssohn (1782–1852), whose two older brothers later founded the well-known Berlin bank Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn ran one of the first workshops for scientific instruments in Berlin. From 1808 to 1813 he made sextants, scales, circular dividing machines and many other instruments in his mechanical workshop.

After founding his own workshop at Mauerstraße 34 in Berlin, Pistor produced mathematical, optical and physical instruments. Here u. a. excellent experts such as B. the later telegraph technician Johann Georg Halske (1814-1890) trained. Pistor himself took every opportunity to expand his knowledge. In the summer of 1798, at the invitation of Franz Xaver von Zach , he took part in the first European astronomers' congress at the Seeberg observatory in Gotha . He traveled e.g. B. in the year 1814 to England to improve his methods of lens production with the well-known opticians and instrument makers Tulley and Hunt.

In 1816, in collaboration with Georg Christian Freund (1793–1819), the first fully functional steam engine built in Berlin was built in his workshop (in operation until 1902, now the Deutsches Museum, Munich).

In 1824, Pistor Friedrich Wilhelm took Schiek into the business as workshop manager and partner, after Schiek had probably been a supplier to Pistor for a number of years. The oldest known piece with the signature "Pistor & Schiek" is the Prussian original ruler from 1816. Initially, in addition to a variety of different instruments, 4 types of microscopes are also offered.

The collaboration between the mechanical artist Schiek and the creative theorist Pistor has brought the workshop numerous successes. In contemporary literature one speaks of the "Schiek microscopes" with praise, which suggests that Schiek is in charge of the "design" in microscope production at Pistor & Schiek . In 1836 Pistor and Schieck finally split up.

Pistor then teamed up first with Wilhelm Hirschmann Senior (1777–1847) and later with his son-in-law Carl Martins (1816–1871). The Pistor & Martins company continued to produce after Pistor's death. The company remained important until Martin's death in 1871, but went bankrupt in 1873.

Products

In a price list by Pistor from 1814, in addition to astronomical and geodetic instruments, there are 3 types of microscope on offer: a Jones microscope, a simple Ellis microscope and a solar microscope. In 1840, the anatomist Jakob Henle (1809–1885), as a new professor in Zurich, was only able to use three microscopes from Amici, Pistor and Schieck that were in private hands because of the poor microscope equipment. He wrote in a report that Pistor's microscopes were good, handy, and affordable.

Other famous works by Pister include circles of meridians . They were the u. a. most important instruments of an observatory in the 19th century, but only a few companies in the world were able to build these sensitive instruments. Pistor constructed the first Berlin meridian circle, completed in 1838, for the Berlin observatory . In the following decades he supplied numerous other meridian circles for European and American observatories.

Optical telegraphy

The last surviving Pistor telescope from the Prussian optical telegraph

In December 1830, Pistor submitted a memorandum to a commission of the Prussian General Staff on the draft for the establishment of a telegraph line in the Royal Prussian States. After King Friedrich Wilhelm III with a secret cabinet order of July 21, 1832 . had given permission to build an optical telegraph line from Berlin to Koblenz and the construction management had been entrusted to the major in the General Staff, Franz August O'Etzel (1783–1850), Pistor's Berliner Werkstätte was chosen as the supplier of the station equipment with signal transmitters and telescopes.

Family and social status

Carl Pistor was an active member of political and social life in Berlin. This was due not least to his membership in various Berlin table societies , such as the Christian-German table society and the lawless society in Berlin . Pistor's circle of friends included many politically liberal citizens and others. a. Ludwig Achim von Arnim , Clemens Brentano , Heinrich von Kleist , Daniel Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Friedrich Schinkel . Pistor was able to marry off his three daughters to distinguished members of society. A daughter married his o. Partner Carl Martin and daughter Cäcilie married the Königsberg historian and philosopher Wilhelm Bechius . Daughter Elisabeth entered into a connection with H. Rudorff, from whom emerged the later art teacher and founder of nature conservation Ernst Rudorff . Pistor was also a well-known music lover who kept a collection of original manuscripts by well-known composers. As a result, he was also acquainted with the then still young Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , whom he hired to help him organize the collection.

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Pistor, Carl Philipp Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pistor, Carl; Pistor, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian civil servant and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1778
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 1847
Place of death Berlin