Carl Schlüns

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Carl Schlüns (born May 12, 1870 in Hagenow ; † January 2, 1936 in Zella-Mehlis ; full name Carl August Christian Schlüns ) was a German engineer and mechanical engineer. He is the designer of the successful Mercedes Elektra electric typewriter .

Life

Carl Schlüns was the son of a builder. After an apprenticeship at the Stock & Kärger machine factory, he completed his studies at the Technikum in Neustadt . Then he drove as a machinist's assistant at North German Lloyd . He then worked as an engineer in special machine construction in the button industry in Schmölln , as an assistant for special machine construction in Gotha and as chief designer at Albert Hirth in Stuttgart and in the Hamburg-American watch factory in Schramberg in the Black Forest, before working as a workshop organizer at AEG in Berlin was. In 1907 he was hired as a designer and manager of the newly founded Mercedes office machine works in Berlin . In 1908 the company was relocated to Mehlis, later called Zella-Mehlis, in Thuringia. The reasons for this were the rapid availability of good metal skilled workers and precision mechanics and lower wages due to the weapons production in Thuringia.

After the model 1 of the Mercedes typewriter by Karl Schüler, which came onto the market in 1907, the model 2 was manufactured by Carl Schlüns in 1908. The number of employees rose from 120 to over 2500. In 1914, Schüler constructed the first factory-made electrically powered type lever typewriter, the Mercedes Elektra . Due to the First World War, production was postponed and it was only launched on the market in 1921. The operating principle is a continuously rotating roller driven by an electric motor. When the keys are touched, the type levers are thrown onto the roller, whereby the strength of the type imprint is independent of the force of the fingers, so the stroke always remains the same. This made it easier to use and to write. In 1924, the electrical computing typewriter and accounting machine Mercedes Addelektra followed .

For the company JP Sauer & Sohn in Suhl , which mainly produced hunting and sporting weapons, Carl Schlüns designed the standard Stolzenberg-Fortuna typewriter , which was sold from 1923. In 1923 Carl Schlüns set up Iris-Type GmbH, a special factory for typewriters and calculating machine types and keys.

At the end of 1927 the company was re-founded as a subsidiary of the New York Underwood-Elliott-Fisher group. Because of the global economic crisis, the number of employees was greatly reduced from 1929, but expanded again from 1933 due to the economic upswing that began with the armament. In 1935 Carl Schlüns gave up management of the factories and retired.

literature

  • Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 8776-8777 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.typewriters.ch from E. Martin: The typewriter and its development history , Aachen, 1949
  2. ↑ www.typewriters.ch from E. Martin: The typewriter and its development history , Aachen, 1949
  3. ↑ private website on historical office technology accessed on April 5, 2012
  4. ^ Technical Museum Vienna
personal data
SURNAME Schlüns, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schlüns, Carl August Christian (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer and mechanical engineer
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Hagenow
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1936
Place of death Zella Mehlis