Casimir Zeglen

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Casimir Zeglen

Casimir Zeglen CR ( Polish Kazimierz Zegleń ) (born March 4, 1869 in Kaczanówka near Ternopil ; † unknown, not before 1927) was a Polish religious who became known as the inventor of the soft ballistic protective vest .

youth

Little is known about Zeglen's origins and youth. Because of his religious beliefs, he wanted to join the Jesuits as a teenager , but his parents were against it. Only when he came of age could he join the Resurrectionists in Lviv in 1887 . In February 1890 he was sent abroad because the order feared that Austria-Hungary would draft Zeglen into the military . After a few months in Rome , Zeglen traveled to the United States , where he began his work at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Chicago .

Invention of the bullet-resistant vest

British Patent No. 5536, March 2, 1897

On October 28, 1893, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. , was shot dead in the street. After this event, Zeglen wanted to do something about the consequences of such attacks. He experimented with various materials that were supposed to protect and eventually focused on silk . As early as 1887, the doctor George E. Goodfellow had reported that silk scarves had not been perforated by projectiles . It is rather unlikely that Zeglen was aware of these reports. On 2 March 1897, he was a "bullet-proof" fabric, a composite of several different layers, patented let (patent no. US578000). The first public demonstration on March 16, 1897 was successful and received great media coverage. There have been a few bulletproof vests since the middle of the 19th century (e.g. protective vests from the American Civil War or Ned Kelly armor ); however, they were based on steel plate armor and proved unsuitable.

Zeglen was aware that his invention could only protect against handguns ( pistol or revolver ), but not against the much more powerful rifles . Further tests followed and it was found that the connection between the various layers was too weak and a second bullet could penetrate the then loosened composite material. Zeglen then invented a more robust connection, which he patented in May 1897 (Patent No. US604870).

After further attempts, on July 10, 1897, protected by his invention, Zeglen let himself be shot with a handgun. The press reported nationwide about the successful test. However, Zeglen also wanted to offer protection against rifle bullets. In the official test on November 4, 1897, expectations were not met. In September 1897, Zeglen tried unsuccessfully to acquire suitable weaving machines for mass production of the bullet-resistant textile on the east coast. He tried to increase the quality and quantity compared to the previous manual work. He hoped to get these looms in Europe, where he arrived in December 1897 and toured various cities. There he met the Polish inventor Jan Szczepanik . The two men entered into a partnership. Szczepanik took care of the weaving machine and in August 1898 the first lengths of the bulletproof textile could be made. The quality was better than the manual work. In the fall of 1898 Zeglen returned to Chicago. Over the next two years, he tried to convince the Chicago police of bullet-resistant vests, but they shrank at the high cost. Otherwise he received only a few orders; his invention was gradually forgotten. Szczepanik, Zeglen's partner in Europe, did little to bring the bullet-resistant textiles onto the market.

The shooting of the President of the United States , William McKinley , on September 6, 1901, gave new impetus to marketing activities , both in the United States and in Europe. Szczepanik tried unsuccessfully to buy Zeglen's patent rights and therefore hid Zeglen's authorship in Europe. The relationship between the two men deteriorated, and the start-up of a company in Detroit, which was planned in the first half of 1902, did not materialize.

With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904, the Russian military began to be interested in bullet-resistant textiles, which led Zeglen to Europe in October 1904. There he learned that Szczepanik was also offering the invention to the Russians without having any rights to it. Zeglen finally broke with Szczepanik. The Russian Empire bought the license from Zeglen and had a steel breastplate covered with Zeglen's textile. Production started in August 1905 and the war ended in September. It is unclear whether any of the breastplates reached the theater of war far to the east in time.

Zeglen believed he was about to market his invention on a large scale and returned to the USA. His order, which had supported him financially for years but had run into financial difficulties due to other risky investments, refused him further help. Zeglen left the Order in 1906, married in November of that year and founded the Zeglen Bullet Proof Cloth Company .

Zeglen turned to other business areas, but remained attached to the topic. In June 1917 he patented an armor plate reinforced with wire mesh (Patent No. US1376304). In 1927 he again contradicted an obituary for Jan Szczepanik in the Polish press , in which Szczepanik was portrayed as the inventor of the bulletproof vest. Zeglen published a list of people who owed their lives to bulletproof vests. He claimed that Archduke Franz Ferdinand also wore his invention but was fatally wounded in the neck during the assassination attempt in Sarajevo that started World War I. This was already reported by parts of the press after the attack. However, there is no evidence that the Archduke protected himself with a bullet-resistant vest. But there were also versions of the vest with a stand-up collar , which would have protected the neck. An investigation by the Royal Armories , 100 years after the attack, has shown that Zeglen's bulletproof vest was capable of at least greatly attenuating the projectile's energy. The test was not very meaningful because it became modern, i.e. H. stronger, ammunition used.

Tire manufacturing

Patent US876616: Puncture Resistant Tire

Zeglen applied his knowledge of bulletproof textiles to car tires . In January 1908 he developed and patented a car tire that was more robust against punctures. In 1915 he founded "Zeglen Tire & Fabric Co" in South Bend (Indiana) . The company bought the Century Rubber Works in Chicago in 1920 . In 1921 the name changed to Chicago City Rubber Works .

Patents

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Sławomir Łotysz: Tailored to the Times: The Story of Casimir Zeglen's Silk Bullet-Proof Vest in: Arms & Armor , Vol. 11 No. 2, autumn 2014 [1]
  2. ↑ Martin J. Brayley : Modern Body Armor , 2011, Crowood Press, ISBN 978-1847972484 , p. 6.
  3. ↑ Jack Coggins: Arms and equipment of the Civil War , Doubleday, 1962, p. 124
  4. ↑ a b Lisa Traynor: The Archduke and the Bullet-Proof Vest: 19th-Century Innovation Versus 20th-Century Firepower , in: Arms & Armor , Vol. 11 No. 2, autumn 2014 [2]
  5. ^ Sara Malm: Could this bullet-proof vest have changed history? in: Daily Mail August 3, 2014
  6. ↑ Maev Kennedy: Tests prove that a bulletproof silk vest could have stopped the first world war in: The Guardian , July 29, 2014
  7. ↑ To Make Bullet-Proof Tires in: Automotive Industries , Volume 33, Verlag Chilton Company, 1915, p. 306 [3]
  8. ↑ India Rubber & Tire Review , Volume 20, Verlag India Rubber Review Company, 1920, p. 507 [4]
  9. ^ Eugene Franz Roeber, Howard Coon Parmelee (ed.): Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering , Volume 25, McGraw-Hill Verlag , 1921. P. 679. [5]
personal data
SURNAME Zeglen, Casimir
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zegleń, Kazimierz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish monk, inventor of the bullet-proof vest
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Kaczanówka near Ternopil
DATE OF DEATH after 1927