Emil Podszus

Emil August Podszus (born January 21, 1881 in Königsberg , † March 27, 1968 in Roth ) was a German physicist and inventor. He applied for well over 100 industrial patents. In 1935 he invented the Podszus loudspeaker diaphragm , whose basic features such as low weight, sandwich structure and suppression of partial vibrations are still taken into account in the development of high-quality loudspeaker diaphragms.

Live and act

Emil August Podszus was born the son of gendarme August Podszus in Königsberg and was baptized as a Protestant. He visited u. a. the royal Luisen-Gymnasium in Memel and passed the final examination there on March 29, 1900. He then studied physics, chemistry, mineralogy and mathematics for seven semesters at the University of Königsberg until 1904, and on July 8, 1904, he passed the teaching examination pro facultate docendi . During his studies, he also worked as an assistant in the university's physics cabinet.

By 1906, there was a year of seminars at the Royal High School in Königsberg and the Royal High School in Allenstein, where he then also completed his probationary year. On April 1, 1906, he took a job as a senior teacher at the municipal high school in Rixdorf near Berlin.

In 1908 he submitted his dissertation on the subject of thermoelectric forces in electrolytes , which was approved by the Philosophical Faculty of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin , on September 23, 1908 he did his doctorate under Max Planck and Walther Nernst .

After receiving his doctorate, he continued to teach at the Oberrealschule in Rixdorf and at the municipal Albrecht Dürer Oberrealschule in Berlin-Neukölln. While he was still teaching, he worked on the further development of electric steam lamps and steam devices.

In 1913 he worked for the Berlin company Ehrich and Graetz . The main focus of his activity was the development of processes for the representation of pure elements, the production of incandescent bodies and light bulbs as well as the gas-tight melting of metal wires in quartz glass. In 1918 he moved to Siemens & Halske . During his work here he applied for several patents for an electric arc lamp with luminous fumes. On May 1, 1924, he was put into temporary retirement as a teacher and then worked on the board of the Berlin Hartstoff-Metall-AG (Hametag) in Berlin-Köpenick. At Hametag, his research focus was on the improvement of processes for the production of the finest metal powder and the production of suitable machines.

After the war, he smuggled the blueprints for the construction of a vortex mill to the west and came under the focus of the Ministry of State Security . Shortly after his wife's death in 1952, he was informed of his impending arrest by a State Security employee. He fled from East Berlin and then worked for the Fürth company Eckart . Here, too, he dealt with the finest metal powders, which were primarily processed into metallic colors and bronzes.

speaker

In the 1930s, loudspeaker membranes were made either of long-fiber, thick paper or of textile material that was partially impregnated with varnish. These membranes were heavy and did not allow a lifelike reproduction of tones as they tended to vibrate partially. At first Podszus tried to dampen these unwanted natural vibrations with springs made of hard-drawn tungsten or steel wire . These springs were fixed in the diaphragm in the form of points in the antinodes of the vibrations that had to be particularly damped, and connected to the rear with supports that were as rigid as possible.

Later he developed a membrane consisting of several layers in which the sound reached different speeds. This minimized the formation of resonances. The outer layer of the membrane was made of a very strong paper. A heat-curing foam made of formaldehyde-based varnish was applied to this. During the curing process, an aluminum foil was pressed on from above. The result was a sandwich membrane with a thickness of about 1.5 mm, which, by adding hard substances such as mica or the like, had extremely high rigidity and a very low weight.

The basic idea of ​​using a foam structure came to him when he saw Sahnebaisers . A trash can, which was lined with heating wires, served as the oven for the membranes. The formulation of the foam as well as the papers and foils used have been changed again and again. Podszus loudspeakers were used, among other things, in professional studio loudspeakers from Klein + Hummel because of their very neutral reproduction characteristics .

Honors

On October 5, 1956, he was awarded the 1st Golden Inventor's Medal of the City of Nuremberg for his inventions in the large ballroom of the Nuremberg State Trade Organization.

At the suggestion of the Bavarian Prime Minister Dr. Wilhelm Hoegner was awarded the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on April 30, 1957 as a researcher and inventor, in particular for his groundbreaking work on hard materials.

Web links

• Emil Podszus' personnel sheet in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Personal data from the curriculum vitae for the dissertation Berlin 1908
2. ↑ Dissertation Berlin 1908: Annalen der Physik Volume 332, Issue 14, Date: 1908, Pages: 859-889
3. ↑ z. B. Patents DE227270A, DE232994A
4. ↑ z. B. Patents DE293964A, DE292483A, DE287268A
5. ↑ handwritten. Entry on personal sheet A for directors, scientific. Teachers and candidates of the higher education authority, http://www.bbf.dipf.de/cgi-opac/digiakt.pl?id=p173952 accessed on January 12, 2010
6. ↑ see signature on share [1] , accessed on May 31, 2012
7. ↑ Because of the large number of patents, reference is made to http://depatisnet.dpma.de/DepatisNet/depatisnet?action=einsteiger with the search term Emil Podszus under Inventor, accessed on January 12, 2010
8. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 12, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ Austrian Patent AT 128717, filed on June 23, 1930
10. ↑ Conversation with son Dr. Werner Podszus on August 15, 2010
11. ↑ Product description loudspeaker O 92 archive link ( Memento of the original dated November 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 12, 2010 
12. ↑ CHRONICLE Personal details - anniversaries ( Memento from June 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) as well as a message from the Nuremberg City Archives, accessed on January 12, 2010
13. ↑ Answer of the Federal President's Office of January 27, 2010 on request