Friedrich von Lössl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Friedrich von Lössl at the age of around 45

Friedrich Ritter von Lössl (born January 14, 1817 in Weiler im Allgäu ; † May 14, 1907 in Vienna ; sometimes Lößl and Loeßl ) was a technically versatile and scientifically trained engineer, an outstanding pioneer of railway line construction in the 19th century in Bavaria and in Austria, aviation pioneer and inventor (including the autodynamic clock system). In addition, he emerged as the creator of beautiful landscape and building sketches and as a promoter of art and culture.

Life

Friedrich Lössl attended the "Alte Gymnasium" in Munich (today: Wilhelmsgymnasium Munich ) and studied from 1836 to 1841 at the university and at the Munich Polytechnic, now the Technical University of Munich . He also took drawing courses at the local art academy. He received his engineering degree at the age of 24.

In the first 15 years of his career, he worked as a railway and structural engineer for the planning and construction of railway lines and bridges in Bavaria. In 1856 he moved to Austria as an engineer, 1st class, for the Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Westbahn .

Lössl's residence changed with his projects. So he stayed in Salzburg from 1856 to 1858 , then in Linz (Upper Austria), then for a year in Immenstadt im Allgäu (Bavaria) and finally to Vienna before he moved his main residence to Aussee (Bad Aussee since 1911).

Friedrich von Lössl in later years

In 1907 Lössl died at the age of 90 of pneumonia in Vienna, shortly before he planned to leave for Aussee.

family

The ancestors of Lössls came from Rötz in the Upper Palatinate and had been a cutler and shoemaker there for generations. In the second half of the 18th century, the brothers Johann Andreas and Johann Baptist emigrated and settled in Munich. Both made careers in the Bavarian administrative hierarchy and in 1790 were accepted by Elector Karl Theodor with the predicate noble in the imperial knight and old country nobility. P. 2–4 The son of Johann Baptist von Lössl was the regional court assessor Josef Valentin Johann Baptist Ritter von Lössl, who also achieved a high reputation. P. 21 He became the father of Friedrich Ritter von Lössl, but died in 1820 when his son was only three years old. The mother went back to Munich, where Friedrich was under the tutelage of his mother's brother, Dr. Johann Perner grew up and went to school. P. 4

Friedrich von Lössl married Luise Maria Probst (1826–1897) in 1849. She was the eldest of 9 children of the businessman Jakob Joseph Probst (1788-1859), who founded the mechanical twine factory in Immenstadt with four sons . The Lössls had 10 children. Son Siegmund von Lössl (* 1856, † 1938) was a member of the State Council of the Bavarian King from April 1906 to December 1918 and was responsible for foreign policy in this advisory body.

Descent list
  1. Hans Georg Lösel (* around 1660), shoemaker in Rötz; ∞ Anna Margarethe Lösl
    1. Georg Balthasar Lösl (* 1690 in Rötz); 2∞ Anna Maria Greiner
      1. Johann Andreas Ritter and Edler von Lössl (1733–1788), Electoral Palatinate Bavarian Court Chamber Councilor, senior seal administrator
      2. Johann Baptist Ritter und Edler von Lössl (1746-1824), electoral Palatinate Bavarian district judge, castner and feudal provost, administrative administrator of the Haag county (north of Wasserburg am Inn)
        1. Josef Valentin Johann Baptist Ritter von Lössl, Regional Court Assessor
          1. Friedrich Ritter von Lössl (1817–1907), inventor, railway and aviation pioneer
            1. Siegmund Ritter and Edler von Lößl (1856–1938), Bavarian State Councilor

Life's work

Surveyor and cartographer

When drawing maps, Lössl looked for ways to make height differences recognizable on flat drawings. He invented a special method of landscape representation with the help of the already known (not invented by him) elevation lines and the layer reliefs created from them and was awarded a gold medal at the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna.

Railway pioneer

Lössl ran a total of 2500 km of railway lines in Bavaria and in the Austrian Empire (after 1867 Austria-Hungary), including the Munich - Salzburg railway and part of the Salzkammergut railway Schärding - Ried - Ebensee - Bad Ischl - Stainach / Irdning. He was one of the first to work regularly with the aforementioned contour lines.

inventor

Lössl had numerous ideas, six of which he had patented (privileges). Including a ship that used the current of water and was able to travel upstream with it.

In Salzburg he wanted to use a steering balloon to transport summer visitors to the Gaisberg, but could not carry out the project.

The autodynamic clock

Lössl's autodynamic clock in Bad Aussee

In 1880, at the age of 63, he presented his most famous invention to the public, the autodynamic clock he had designed, which used fluctuations in air pressure and temperature as an energy source for the elevator. He received a patent from the Imperial Patent Office on October 28, 1880. He had the idea of ​​a “free” energy source long before the engineer Jean-Léon Reutter , who in 1928 - 48 years later - developed the Atmos , which is still produced today , whose function was based on the based on the same physical principles. Ritter von Lössl's tragedy was that electricity, which was emerging at the time, was preferred as an energy supplier for clocks, and that his technology was forgotten. Probably no more than 14 clocks were built.

Lössl's clocks in Paris, Hamburg, Vienna, Linz and Marburg have disappeared from the scene. The only surviving copy is in Bad Aussee .

Aviation pioneer

In Bad Aussee , his Villa Gentiana , filled with flight test models , which he built in 1890 and lived in until the end of his life in 1907, as well as the Lössl promenade that begins there, remind of the great inventor and patron of Bad Aussee.

Lössl also showed his technical genius as a researcher and pioneer in the field of aviation. His main work: The Air Resistance Laws, Falling Through the Air and Birds Flight: Mathematical-Mechanical Clarification on an Experimental Basis (1895) was groundbreaking for the development of aircraft. Today the technician and inventor is almost wrongly forgotten.

The Lössl clock in Bad Aussee

The only surviving example of a Lössl car dynamic clock is in Bad Aussee . In 1897 von Lössl gave the clock to the Bad Aussee community as a gift. It had stood in Vienna until 1894, but had to give way to the construction of the light rail on the Währinger belt. Today the Lössl clock is driven by an electric drive, as the vibrations of the passing traffic had severely affected the sensitive clockwork.

“100 years ago it was already unique, the shape of the elevator and above all the shape of the escapement - the circular pendulum. [...] The conversion to "electric" took place [...] for the reason that the clock is on a traffic area that is also heavily used by heavy traffic. If this were not the case, there would at least be an enormous amount of maintenance required to keep the mechanism, which is over 100 years old, running. The 0.5 cubic meter air tank and the pressurized cans were also no longer leak-proof.

About a year ago I repaired the electric clock drive and would like to note the following: The mechanical clockwork is preserved and is in the local museum under safe lock. The circular pendulum was no longer in the column of the clock. I recovered the drive shaft between the clockwork and the angular gear of the pointer sets. There is also a small lever that may have come from the pendulum mount. The pressurized cans are still on site and in poor condition. I will expand it soon and also spend it in the museum.

Otherwise, this unique monumental clock will be treated with care by the municipality of Bad Aussee and [...] shows the exact time on all four dials. "

- Report under the pseudonym johannh6361 on Sagen.at Forum [2]

“During the occupation after World War II, cocky young American soldiers chose this watch as a target. A very good pistol shooter among them said: Not the dial, not even the eagle on the top tip, but its head should be hit. As you can see on the photo, it has been missing since then. So the ambition of these men [coincidentally] saved the watch from major damage. "

- Post under the pseudonym johannh6361 on Sagen.at forum

Honors

  • World Exhibition 1873 in Vienna: Gold medal for his method of planning railway lines with layered reliefs.
  • October 5, 1913: Unveiling of a memorial plaque at Villa Gentiana .
  • 1960: Name of the traffic area Lösslweg in Vienna- Leopoldstadt (2nd district).

Literary works by Lössl

  • About isopedic reliefs . Traunstein: 1854.
  • Relief of a terrain game near Traunstein in Isopeden from 10 to 10 Bavarian. Feet vertical distances in addition to the sea depths of 2 to 2 bayer. Foot; for this two variant projection pieces of the Munich-Salzburg Railway, presented by FR v. Loessl . Traunstein: Miller, 1854.
  • Technical report on the project of a shipping canal between the Sava and Danube in the military border and Slavonia . Vienna 1869.
  • 39 panels of isopedic terrain recordings from the detailed project of the Salzkammergut Railway, written by Friedrich Ritter von Loessl in 1871, containing the transition of the trace over the Hausruckgebirge with the Thomasroither coalfield . Vienna: Hölder, 1873.
  • Aussee and the surrounding area with all existing driving and walking paths . 1882.
  • Air resistance in general and in its particular relation to aviation . Vienna: Self-published by the Association for the Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge, 1886.
  • The laws of air resistance, falling through the air and flight of birds: mathematical-mechanical clarification on an experimental basis . Vienna: Hölder, 1896.
  • Four diaries , Kurrent script, ink on handmade paper: Diary 1: 1833–1839, Diary 2: 1840–1849, Diary 3: 1850–1880, Diary 4: July 1880–1905

For more works by Lössl, see the bibliography in Gschwandtner's book.

literature

To works:

Web links

Commons : Friedrich von Lössl  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

About the work:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e see web link Salzburg-Wiki
  2. ^ Leitschuh, Max: The matriculations of the upper classes of the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich, 4 vol., Munich 1970–1976 .; Vol. 4, p. 9
  3. ↑ a b see literature Gschwandtner: The "Privilegien-Ritter" Friedrich Ritter von Lössl (1817-1907)
  4. ↑ see web link Lothar Hofer: Economic and energetic potentials of air pressure
  5. ↑ [1] see Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
  6. ↑ Article Gönner von Aussee in the Wiener Zeitung ( memento of the original from January 3, 2010 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wienerzeitung.at
  7. ↑ see literature Victor von Röll: Enzyklopädie des Eisenbahnwesens, Bayerische Eisenbahnen
  8. ↑ from Josef H. Schröers: The autodynamic clock see references
  9. ↑ a b see web link Bad Aussee
  10. ↑ Little Chronicle. (...) Unveiling of a Loeßl memorial plaque in Aussee. In:  Wiener Zeitung , Wiener Abendpost , No. 225/1913, September 30, 1913, p. 3, bottom left. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz.
personal data
SURNAME Lössl, Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lössl, Friedrich Ritter von; Loeßl, Friedrich von; Loessl, Friedrich von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian engineer, pioneer of railway line construction in Bavaria and Austria, inventor of the autodynamic clock system
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamlet in the Allgäu
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1907
Place of death Vienna