Eugen Nesper (engineer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eugen Heinrich Josef Nesper (born July 5, 1879 in Meiningen ; † May 3, 1961 in Berlin ) was a German engineer, high-frequency technician and writer. He is considered a pioneer of wireless transmission.

Life

Eugen Nesper was the son of the actor Josef Nesper (1844–1925) and his wife Therese (1855–1914). He attended the Falk Realgymnasium in Berlin, but left school prematurely in 1896 and began a traineeship in the Berlin branch of the Deutz gas engine factory Möller & Bluhm . As an assistant assistant he took part in the early attempts at wireless telegraphy in 1896/1897, which Adolf Slaby and his assistant Georg Graf von Arco carried out in Potsdam-Babelsberg. He was one of the first radio pioneers.

Eugen Nesper passed the external high school diploma in 1898 and then studied electrical engineering , mechanical engineering and economics at the Technical University in Charlottenburg up to the diploma in 1902. In 1904 Nesper received his doctorate with the thesis "The radiation of coils". phil. at the University of Rostock . In the summer semester of 1904 he worked as a technical assistant at the Electrotechnical Institute of the Technical University of Danzig and then as a laboratory engineer at the Telefunken Society for wireless telegraphy .

In 1906, he and other Telefunken employees moved to C. Lorenz AG , which had just acquired the license rights for the arc transmitter he had invented from the Amalgamated Radio Telegraph Company of the Danish physicist Valdemar Poulsen . In the following years Nesper worked in a leading position on its further development and on other early wireless systems. He soon headed the wireless department and from 1917 to 1921 he ran the Lorenzwerke branch in Vienna . During this time he developed an increasing fascination for the idea of ​​organized broadcasting, which was still new at the time.

"... the idea of ​​building devices for wireless telephonic transmission, not only to quickly transmit objectively kept messages to anyone who had an appropriate recipient, but above all to serve the idea of ​​international reconciliation."

- Eugen Nesper : Original sound

When he realized in 1921 that he could achieve something more in the German Reich than in the Republic of Austria , he returned to Berlin as a technical writer and expert. In the following years he campaigned very aggressively for broad public attention for his demand for a quick introduction and spread of radio in Germany. To this end, he relied primarily on his scientific publications, which were aimed at a very willing readership, such as the magazine "Jahrbuch der wireless Telegraphie", whose editor he was Heinrich Fassbenders' successor from 1922 for several years. In March 1923, together with Siegmund Loewe , Manfred von Ardenne and Otto Kappelmayer , he improvised a screening of English radio programs in front of numerous members of the Reich Cabinet and the Reich President Friedrich Ebert in order to gain political support for the establishment of entertainment broadcasting in Germany. On April 6, 1923, Siegmund Loewe and Eugen Nesper founded the first radio club in Berlin, the "Deutsche Radio-Klub eV". In August of the same year, he began to publish the magazine "Der Radio-Amateur", which had an edition in the first six months of 50,000. In addition, he was not only active as an author of his own books, but also as a translator of several English-language works on the subject of radio and broadcasting. In addition to Hans Bredow , who set the political and legal course, Nesper, with his public propaganda in the history of radio, is considered to be one of the decisive pioneers of October 29, 1923, when the first entertainment broadcast by Funk-Hour Berlin from the Vox- House of Radio in Germany celebrated its official start.

On the technical side, by working as an expert and consultant, he participated in numerous detailed improvements, both to the antenna and to various other components of the first radio receiver. Parts developed with his participation had an excellent reputation beyond the borders of Germany. The National Socialists called on him several times as a broadcasting expert and in 1943 commissioned him to develop an ultrasonic signal transmission, which he worked on in Dresden until the end of the war.

Little by little, Nesper expanded his interests to include video telegraphy and television technology. At the beginning of the 1940s he worked intensively on building loudspeakers. In 1949 he received a patent for a spatial sound system in which he already formulated the basic ideas for the later 3-D sound .

Eugen Nesper died lonely in Berlin at the age of 82. Her marriage to the doctor's daughter Käte Wilbrandt (* 1882), entered into in 1908, was childless.

In Berlin-Lichtenrade a street was named after him, the Nespersteig.

Achievements and works

He achieved great fame with his numerous publications on radio technology, both in specialist magazines such as Der Radio-Amateur or Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift , as well as with numerous books. The standard works include paths to the detector loudspeaker , which was published in 1946 and which he considerably revised in 1949.

For several years he also edited the Wiener Funkmagazin , radio technology and the Dralowid news . He wrote a total of around 1000 technical articles and more than 30 books, in particular:

  • The wireless telegraphy and its influence on the commercial traffic with special consideration of the >> System Telefunken << . Berlin (Springer) 1905
  • The frequency and attenuation meters of radiation telegraphy , 1907
  • Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony . Berlin (Springer) 1921, 2 volumes
  • Radio Fast Telegraph , 1922
  • The radio amateur "Broadcasting". A textbook and auxiliary book for radio amateurs of all countries , 1923
  • Radio in the country and in small towns , 1925
  • A life for funk - How radio came about , 1950
  • VHF and television receiving antennas (together with A. Korn), 1954

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See also the entry by Eugen Nesper in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ↑ a b Kurt Jäger: Lexikon der Elektrotechniker, VDE-Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-8007-2120-1 . P. 269
  3. ↑ Raumplastik- Playingeinrichtung, DBP 969503 of October 18, 1949
personal data
SURNAME Nesper, Eugene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nesper, Eugen Heinrich Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer, high frequency technician and pioneer of wireless transmission
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Meiningen
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1961
Place of death Berlin