Ferdinand Dencker

Ferdinand (Daniel) Dencker (born August 2, 1837 in Lütjenburg , Schleswig-Holstein, † March 19, 1917 in Hamburg ) was a chronometer maker.

Around 1866 Dencker opened a workshop for the manufacture of marine chronometers and precision pendulum clocks in the Hanseatic city of Hamburg. In keeping with the times, he tried to minimize the secondary compensation error. Theodor Knoblich was his partner for a short time around 1870 . Dencker supplied the standard clock for the royal geodetic institute in Potsdam. Sometimes he worked with the Swiss Jean-Moïse Badollet and Meylan from Le Brassus, from whom he obtained clockworks and cases. He was a member of the Chronometry Association founded by Wilhelm Foerster on March 23, 1899 . Between 1903 and 1905 he successfully took part in the competition tests of the Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg with marine chronometers and was appointed several times as an expert at the Seewarte.

In 1905 he founded his chronometer factory in Grosse Bäckerstraße 13/15.

On October 6, 1905, he founded Chronometer-Werke GmbH with six Hamburg and Bremen shipping companies in Neue Gröninger Strasse 22/24 , and he became its managing director. The capital he brought in (30%) consisted mainly of machines, tools, semi-finished parts and raw materials. An annual production of 240 chronometers and 500 ship's clocks was aimed for, but this was limited to 50-60 chronometers until the First World War. In 1907 he hired Walter Prell . As a result of insufficient financial coverage and discrepancies with the other partners, he left the company on January 8, 1908 and continued to work as an independent chronometer maker. Ernst William Meier († 1929), Charles Heinrich Möller, 1937–1942 Friedrich Leutert until 1938 Herbert Wempe took over the work as managing director and turned it into Wempe Chronometerwerke .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Brüggenthies, Wolfgang R. Dick: Biographischer Index der Astronomie , p. 144
2. ↑ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1900AN....152...53E