Heinrich Beck (engineer)

Heinrich Beck (* 20th September 1878 in Salzungen ; † 17th August 1937 in Meiningen ) was a German engineer of electrical engineering .

Heinrich Beck

Life

The Heinrich Beck Institute in Meiningen

Heinrich Beck attended grammar school in Meiningen from 1888 and showed an early interest in technical inventions. At the age of 13 he tinkered with an electrifying machine , which was taken over by the Meiningen grammar school for the Naturalienkabinett , as the classrooms for the very rudimentary physics lessons were called at the time. After his father's death in 1892, Heinrich Beck ended his school career prematurely and began an apprenticeship as a locksmith , as this training seemed to suit him more than learning old-language vocabulary.

Between 1896 and 1898 he studied at the Neue Technikum Hildburghausen , where Conrad Matschoss , who later pioneered German engineering history, was giving lectures on mechanical engineering. He was also a guest student at the Royal Technical University of Berlin (today: Technical University Berlin ) in Charlottenburg with Adolf Slaby , who had been the first full professor of electrical engineering there since 1883. At that time Heinrich Beck was already busy designing and manufacturing a dynamo machine . This led to the first contact with lighting technology , when the device was used to power a headlight arc lamp.

Between 1899 and 1902 Heinrich Beck was employed as a technical assistant at the Hamburg installation office Bischof & Rodatz. Here he was mainly concerned with improving the lack of operational safety and the overly complicated control mechanisms of the arc lamp technology used at the Port of Hamburg.

From 1903 he settled in Meiningen ( Duchy of Saxony-Meiningen ), where he drove the construction of the regular Beck arc lamp in the cellar of the Waldfrieden inn. Three years later, with the support of some donors, the Deutsche Beck-Bogenlampen-Gesellschaft was founded in Frankfurt am Main . After the company's insolvency, Beck set up the Heinrich Beck Institute in a newly built villa in Meiningen in 1912, where he conducted research with interruptions until his death.

Outstanding discovery

In 1909 he began work on the development of a high-performance floodlight for the Navy. Between 1911 and 1912 he discovered the effect that in the overloaded direct current discharge arc between carbon electrodes with a galvanic jacket and the luminous salt wick of the anode, a high-intensity luminous flux occurs due to the following factors:

1. From a current density of about 1.2 A / mm² , the carbon, which acts as a cathode , emits a cluster of extremely fast electrons , ions and molar ions regardless of the electromagnetic force field . It leaves the coal tip in a straight line and is separated from the slower ions in the main field by a visible dark zone.
2. The high energy of this ion cluster and the ionization of neutral particles in front of the anode creates a negatively charged plasma layer with high temperatures. On the one hand, this gas plasma is penetrated by fast electrons; on the other hand, it forms a shield for the heavier molar ions. The negative flame, chemical processes also take place that cause strong light phenomena, are thereby deflected, and most of all at its tip with the ions leaving it. The deflection takes place due to thermal upward.
3. A more or less deep crater forms under the hot gas plasma in front of the anode. Depending on the average current density at the crater rim, crater throat and evaporating wick (heavy metal salts and halides), a balance is established between the crater depth and the charcoal burned off. The melting and evaporation temperatures of the elements involved are decisive.
4. The following elements and compounds are involved in light emission: carbon, cerium, fluorine, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, copper, cerium fluoride, cerium carbide, hydrocarbons, oxides, nitrides, sulphides.

patent

German Reich Patent No. 262913, granted by Körting & Mathiesen Akt.-Ges. in Leutzsch-Leipzig; patented in the German Empire from September 13, 1910.

In 1912, the first test headlight was presented to the Navy in cooperation with the Leipzig company Körting  &  Mathiesen , which, however, decided against its introduction - despite its unsurpassed range - because they feared that the pure white light of the Beck-Bogen would make a hazy atmosphere less good than the yellowish light of conventional carbon arc lamps.

However, through his representative in the United States, Heinrich Beck was able to establish contact with the US Navy, which showed great interest in his invention, since the Beck headlight, which was considered the most powerful in the world until 1945, increased the performance of American products by around that Exceeded five times. Heinrich Beck sold his American headlight patents to General Electric and had to remain in the United States after the outbreak of World War I until the end of hostilities.

Further development

Heinrich Beck came back to Meiningen in 1920 and was initially unable to resume his previous employment because of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty , which only allowed the Siemens-Schuckert works to develop large headlights.

His sons Harald and Heinz Beck familiarized themselves with headlight technology at an early age and then, after Heinrich Beck's death in 1937, brought their knowledge and experience to the development of new large headlights by AEG, which manufactured the Beck headlights under license and improved them considerably .

In 2003 Heinrich Beck's grandson and great-grandson, Dr. Rasmus Beck and Tilmann Beck, the Heinrich Beck Institute GmbH (HBI) at the old headquarters in Meiningen and continue the tradition in the development of headlights. You rely on LED technology and see yourself as a technology supplier for lighting manufacturers. Under the product name "BeckLite", high-tech flashlights, headlamp systems, airport apron lighting and street lighting are developed that only consume a fraction of the energy of conventional light sources and are also more luminous.

literature

• Heinrich Beck: The theory of the Beck arc . In: Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift (Zentralblatt für Elektrotechnik), Volume 42, Issue 36, Berlin, September 8, 1921.
• Carl Graf von Klinckowstroem :  Beck, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 701 ( digitized version ).
• Hans Mager: From lime light to H. I. light . In: image and sound; Cont.
• Wolfgang Finkelnburg: high-current coal arc. Physics and technology of a high temperature arc discharge . Heidelberg 1948

Web links

• Detailed biography
• Heinrich Beck Institute GmbH