Ferdinand Kinon

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Ferdinand Kinon (born October 29, 1867 in Stolberg (Rhineland) , † November 8, 1919 in Aachen ) was a German glass and mirror manufacturer and the first serial producer of laminated safety glass in Germany.

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The son of the glass manufacturer Nikolaus Franz Viktor Kinon (1831–1887) and Henriette Willems (1843–1925) completed a commercial apprenticeship in his father's glass and mirror manufacture after finishing school. His father had built this in Burtscheid in 1871 and after his untimely death it was initially run by Ferdinand's mother alone. In 1894 Ferdinand took over the commercial management of the company and at the same time became a partner in the company alongside his mother and together with his brother Viktor (1869–1934), who was the technical director.

Advertisement Glas- und Spiegelmanufaktur N. Kinon, Düsseldorf branch, Pempelforter Straße 88, 1905

Targeted expansion of the company to include a glass bending shop, a production line for lead and brass glazing and a company sign painting, as well as clever company expansions, began a strong upward development of the company. Kinon founded a branch in Cologne in 1894 , which was followed by another in Düsseldorf-Pempelfort in 1902 and one in Leipzig in 1909 . A little later he acquired the important glass factory Röder, Meyer & Compagnie Hohenschönhausen in Berlin , where he completed a new mirror factory in 1912. This branch was now renamed the Berlin-Aachen mirror manufacturer Röder, Meyer & Compagnie and existed until 1930.

Ferdinand Kinon achieved a major breakthrough in 1910 with the acquisition of the manufacturing rights from the Parisian Société du Verre Triplex to the laminated safety glass by the chemist Édouard Bénédictus, which had been patented a year earlier . In this process, two glass panels were coated one after the other with a gelatine and cellulose layer, then put together with a celluloid layer in a spirit bath and glued together using a hydraulic press at an elevated temperature to make them shatterproof. Ferdinand's brother Viktor built an additional production facility to manufacture these new products, which went into operation in 1913. This is where the production of laminated glass for the automobile industry and above all bulletproof glass and colored laminated glasses for aviator goggles began .

Ferdinand Kinon and his brother were the first in Germany to mass-produce safety glass after France (1910), England and the USA (1911).

Following Ferdinand's death in 1919, his brother Viktor took over the overall management of the company, acquired the Bénédictus patents for Germany in 1927 and introduced them under the trade name Kinonglas . In the same year, Kinonglas was used in series production by Ford Germany in Berlin and Horch in Zwickau for windshields in automobile construction.

Since Ferdinand Kinon's marriage to Helene Westendorp (1874-1959), daughter of the art photographer Eugen Westendorp , had only one daughter, his three nephews, sons of his brother Viktor, joined the company and took on important management positions. Walter Kinon (1895–1961) was a member of the board of directors, Ferdinand junior (* 1896) became technical director and Hans (* 1905) head of the laminated glass company. Together they led the company in 1952 as a subsidiary in the Vereinigte Glaswerke Aachen GmbH (VEGLA), a branch as well as the main agency responsible for Germany and Central Europe of the French industrial group Compagnie de Saint-Gobain . The company founded by Ferdinand Kinon still exists in this constellation today and operates under the name Kinon Aachen GmbH with almost 190 employees. The Saint-Gobain subsidiary Kinon Porz GmbH in Cologne-Porz , which is responsible for high-security glass, also bears his name in memory of Kinon's achievement. The latter company supplied the special glass for the Grand Canyon Skywalk .

Ferdinand Kinon himself found his final resting place in a splendid crypt in Aachen's Ostfriedhof .

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personal data
SURNAME Kinon, Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German glass and mirror manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Stolberg (Rhineland)
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1919
Place of death Aachen