Gustave Naville

Gustave Naville (born October 17, 1848 in Geneva , † November 6, 1929 in Kilchberg ZH ) was a Swiss entrepreneur.

After attending school in Geneva, Gustave Naville studied mechanical engineering at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich from 1867 to 1870 . From 1873 to 1902 he was with Escher, Wyss & Cie. initially worked in Zurich as an engineer and from 1882 as President of the Management Board. From 1876 he was a partner in this company and from 1889 delegate of the board of directors. As President of Escher, Wyss & Cie. steamship and turbine construction for river power plants.

Through Peter Emil Huber-Werdmüller , the director of Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon , Naville got in touch with the French Paul Louis Toussaint Héroult, one of the two inventors of aluminum fused-salt electrolysis . He had ordered a dynamo machine from Oerlikon to supply electricity for his electrolysis furnace and carried out experiments when the generator was accepted in Switzerland. Huber recognized the ingenuity of the Héroult process and its implications for technology. He attached great importance to the support of Naville in his plan to build an aluminum plant in Schaffhausen using hydropower at the Rhine Falls , in which aluminum should be produced.

In August 1887, Naville and Georg Robert Neher , whose family owned the water rights to the Rhine Falls and also had the infrastructure with their ironworks at this location, founded with Peter Emil Huber-Werdmüller, Paul Louis Toussaint Héroult and eight other shareholders in Neuhausen am Rheinfall the first aluminum factory in Europe, the "Swiss Metallurgical Society". In 1888 he played a key role in founding Aluminum Industrie AG , the predecessor company of Alusuisse. At Alusuisse he was Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1888 to 1915 and President from 1915 to 1929. In these functions he significantly promoted the expansion of the company, so from 1905 the construction of further plants in Rheinfelden in Baden ( Aluminum Rheinfelden ) or Chippis on the Rhone.

In addition to his work in industry, Naville had taken on other tasks. From 1892 to 1900 he was a member of the board of directors of the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt , from 1883 to 1928 co-founder and board member of the "Association of Swiss Machine Manufacturers", from 1905 to 1929 board member of the "Employers' Association of Swiss Machine and Metal Manufacturers" from 1908 until 1921 co-founder and president of the “Central Association of Swiss Employers' Organizations” , and from 1907 to 1912 president of the “Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects” .

From 1891 to 1927 Naville was a member of the Federal School Council, from 1898 its vice-president. In 1918 he received the title of Dr. hc from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich.

Naville married Charlotte Neher in 1874, a granddaughter of the Schaffhausen industrialist Heinrich Moser , daughter of Johann Georg Neher-Moser (1826–1885) and sister of Oscar Neher . Charlotte Neher was a cousin of Georg Robert Neher, with whom Naville founded the Aluminum Industrie Aktiengesellschaft AIAG in 1888 . His sons were Henri A. Naville and Robert Naville (1884–1970).

literature

• Olivier Beffort: Aluminum in the period 1880–1905. In: Ludwig von Tetmajer Przerwa: Pioneers / Swiss pioneers of economy and technology. Volume 66, 1995, pp. 112-114. ( online ( memento of April 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive )).
• Aymon de Mestral: Gustave Naville-Neher 1848-1929. Association for economic history studies, Zurich 1960. (Swiss pioneers in economy and technology, volume 11).
• Leo Weisz : Studies on the commercial and industrial history of Switzerland. Volume 2, Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1940, 258 pp.
• Markus Bürgi:  Gustave Naville. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 2 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Markus Bürgi: Naville, Gustave. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .