Franz Lang (inventor)

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Franz Xaver Lang (born December 2, 1873 in Altomünster , † December 16, 1956 in Munich ) was a German locksmith, inventor and engine builder.

Life

After completing an apprenticeship as a locksmith in Altomünster, Lang came to MAN in Nuremberg during the traveling years of 1898 . There he was assigned to work as a mechanic in Rudolf Diesel's test workshop . He recognized the need to improve the diesel engine as a vehicle engine . It was important to him to achieve a particularly smooth running of the engine and a low load on the mechanics. To do this, he experimented with undivided combustion chambers , i.e. direct injection . The consumption values ​​were more favorable, but the necessary injection pressure was too high. The ignitions were also very hard. In Lang's view, both of these prevented the construction of a light, high-speed and low-noise vehicle engine based on this principle. It was not until around 1990, i.e. after another sixty years of development work, that it was possible to design a really comfortable passenger car diesel engine based on the direct injection process with electronically controlled injection processes .

In the course of his experiments, Franz Lang therefore came back to his air storage process or Lanova process . It combined the external storage in the cylinder head with a special shape of the combustion chamber. The butterfly-shaped combustion chamber when viewed from above led to a particularly favorable turbulence when blowing out the air reservoir . As a result, the engine still worked soot-free even with a small excess of air - which corresponds to a high load.

Loschge examined the engine and compared it with other diesel engines on the market at the time, and came to the following conclusion: "... the Lang engine (achieves) the highest mean effective pressure , the lowest fuel consumption and also the smallest specific displacement ."

In 1931 Loschge presented the Lanova engine to the global public at the 70th general meeting of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) in Cologne . He called his new development Lanova engine based on the Lanova injection process , which means something like "The new one from Lang".

As a result of the dispute with Bosch over the contestation of the contract and the allegations of fraud, Franz Lang came back in contact with Albert Wielich and founded Lanova AG with him in 1930 . At the same time, a settlement was reached in which Franz Lang, Albert Wielich and Robert Bosch AG agreed at the beginning of 1931 to contest the 1925 contract. This also resulted in the regulation of further cooperation. In 1930, Robert Bosch AG allowed Franz Lang to exploit his inventions, which of course partly depended on the ACRO patents held by Bosch. For this purpose, they could only be made available to Lanova AG. Lanova AG, in turn, undertook to induce all licensees to purchase the necessary injection equipment from Bosch.

In the meantime, Franz Lang's work had also become internationally known. On September 27, 1930 Franz Lang received a visit from Henry Ford I in his laboratory , who was interested in the diesel engine as a vehicle drive.

Honors

Patents

Extract of major developments

  • Injection internal combustion engine with air reservoir Pat.No. AT 132 890, filed November 19, 1930
  • Air storage diesel machine Pat. AT 135 228, filed November 19, 1930
  • Air storage diesel machine Pat. AT 143 137, filed October 26, 1932
  • Injection internal combustion engine with combustion chamber separated from the displacement, Pat. AT 146 406 B, filed on August 16, 1935
  • Injection internal combustion engine PatNr. AT 152 147, filed June 26, 1936

swell

Source: Dr.-Ing. E. h. Franz Lang engine builder and inventor from Altomünster; Author Hans-Joachim Geisweid

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Office of the Federal President
  2. Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany . In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 6, No. 107, May 31, 1954.