Heinrich Wild

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The bridal couple Heinrich and Lilly Wild (1900)

Heinrich Wild (born November 15, 1877 in Mitlödi , Canton Glarus ; † December 26, 1951 in Baden ) was a Swiss geodesist , inventor and company founder.

Life

At the age of 15 he began a practical apprenticeship with the then Linthingenieur Legler in Glarus (Linthingenieur = hydraulic engineer for the Linth river ). He bought a small angle measuring instrument and after a short time made extensive recordings of the course of the Linth on his own. Later he attended the Geometerschule in Winterthur and came in 1899 as an intern for Topography in Bern . The director of this office soon recognized the young man's excellent talent. In 1900 he became engineer III. Class of this federal authority elected. He worked as a topographer, leveler and triangulation engineer.

There were parallels to Albert Einstein's work in Bern: Einstein was a technical expert III. Class worked at the Federal Patent Office in Bern from 1902. Both married when they were 23 and lived in Bern. Both left Bern after about seven years. In 1930, both were awarded honorary doctorates ( Doktor honoris causa ) by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich ( ETHZ ). The basic inventions of both from the Bern miracle year 1905 are combined today in the modern world-leading surveying systems. While Heinrich Wild recorded the design features of his new theodolite as a specification that year, Albert Einstein described the photo effect in his work, which was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. It is the basis for the development of the laser, which has been used with wild theodolites for simultaneous distance measurement for half a century and for a good decade in combination with the 3-D laser scanner for the total acquisition of so-called point clouds. With his two theories of relativity, Einstein also provided the information for determining the correction values ​​to stabilize the GPS satellites against the relativistic effects in 1908 and 1917, so that the security of the overall system can be guaranteed and the accuracy of Wild's theodolite systems combined with GPS technology can be increased.

Wild's ancestors came from Toggenburg . There were parallels and family relationships with the other two great personalities of this eastern Swiss high valley: "Just as Huldrych Zwingli reformed the church and Jost Bürgi reformed our knowledge of heaven, Heinrich Wild changed our knowledge of the earth through his instruments". The ancestor Claus Wild In 1539 Wildhaus had the one from Alt-St. Johann born Anna Zwingli married, a niece of the reformer. Jost Bürgi (1552–1632) and Heinrich Wild are connected by their common Toggenburg origins, the fact that they both built astronomical instruments during their time in Germany - Jost Bürgi made the metal sextants in the Kassel City Palace - and the construction of the surveying equipment - Heinrich Wild at Zeiss in Jena Leveling devices and theodolites - improved and reduced in size compared to previous devices, so that they became the global industry standard.

As a result of his ability, Wild was promoted to engineer first class. In addition to the verification of the forest measurements, the management entrusted him with the handling of instrumental questions after having correctly recognized his outstanding talent in this field.

Wild was certainly not the only trigonometer to which some of the design of the conventional theodolite did not fit. With him, however, a critical mind happily met with ingenious inventiveness. Due to his bad experience in high mountain triangulation with a theodolite of conventional design, he tried to design a new theodolite as early as 1905, which fulfilled a requirement he had made himself: With a simpler axis system with a rotatable circle, two opposite parts of the circle should be read in both positions of the telescope can without the observer having to leave his place in front of the telescope.

In 1907, Wild left the state's topography and soon after moved to Jena to set up a new department for the construction of geodetic instruments at Carl Zeiss . He started developing level instruments . According to Abbe's instruction "to enter new areas of practical optics only with products that, resulting from our own work, were not manufactured at all or not in the same way by others", these instruments differed significantly from the previously common ones. The cylindrical standing axis , integrated foot screws , internal focusing and especially the coincidence vial were revolutionary innovations. Wild gave the optical theodolite the shape it has basically retained to this day.

In 1921, Wild returned to Switzerland and, together with Robert Helbling , who ran a surveying office, and the politician Jacob Schmidheiny , founded their own company, Heinrich Wild, workshop for precision mechanics and optics , which was later renamed Wild Heerbrugg and became world-famous. Here, in addition to a number of other measuring instruments, the "Universal Theodolite Wild" (later known under the name Wild T2 ), the "Precision Theodolite" ( Wild T3 ) and the "Stereoautograph Wild" (Wild A1) for aerial photo evaluation were created . In the process, Wild calculated new lenses that represented great progress. He carried out the optical calculations according to his own method, which enabled him to make corrections significantly further than was previously the case.

It may perhaps be typical of the inventor Wild that he cared little about the economic issues of his company and was rather dependent on the support of his co-owners in this area. This development reached its logical climax when he left his own company in 1932 in order to be able to work as a freelance designer and inventor free from the constant pressure of a production company.

Until his death on December 26, 1951, he designed the legendary DK1, DKM1 , DM2 and DKM2 theodolites - for the first time with ball bearing vertical axis and double circle - and the predecessor of the DKM3 for the former competitor Kern & Co. AG , Aarau . The Wild Spur , a mountain ridge in the Antarctic, has been named after him since 1960 .

plant

Heinrich-Wild-Strasse Heerbrugg

Wild was mainly active in the fields of optics , mechanics , surveying and photogrammetry . He was certainly the person who most influenced the development of surveying and its instruments in the first half of the 20th century and thus made a significant contribution to the development of modern surveying instruments. By founding Heinrich Wild, workshop for precision mechanics and optics , he also initiated the successful development of Leica's company history in 1921 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Swiss Physical Society, November 2008
  2. ^ Fritz Staudacher: World with Wild Mass . In: Toggenburger Verlag (Hrsg.): Toggenburger Jahrbuch . 2018th edition. tape 2019 . Toggenburger Verlag, Schwellbrunn 2018, ISBN 978-3-908166-83-2 , p. 127-140 .
  3. ^ Benno Stöckli: Heinrich Wild (1877-1951), Balgach. In: Rheintaler heads. Rheintaler Druckerei und Verlag, Berneck 2004, pp. 385–393