Ivan Petrovich Kulibin
Ivan Kulibin ( Russian Иван Петрович Кулибин ; born April 10, jul. / 21st April 1735 greg. In Nizhny Novgorod , † July 30 jul. / 11. August 1818 greg. ) Was a Russian watchmaker , mechanic , builder of bridges and Inventor . For more than 30 years he headed the mechanical workshop of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, where he manufactured various mechanical, electrostatic and optical devices, as well as navigation instruments. The special thing about him was that he acquired most of his skills self-taught .
life and work
Kulibin was born the son of a trader in Nizhny Novgorod. At the Djak he learned arithmetic, read and write so that he could help out in his father's shop. These skills were the only ones he acquired in school. As a teenager he taught himself the metalworking trade. Even then, he succeeded in building a hydraulic system to clean the completely overturned pond, in which fish were soon to be found again. A visit from a neighbor who showed him a cuckoo clock aroused his interest in the watchmaking trade. He also learned this autodidactically and introduced an important innovation for Russia: he replaced wooden components of the mechanism with steel ones. The high point of his career as a watchmaker was the three years of work on an egg-shaped clock, which, in addition to its primary function, played melodies and contained a theater machine that moved figures on the clock. He presented this watch to Catherine the Great in 1768 , who honored Kulibin's skill with an invitation to Saint Petersburg. The watch in question is on display today in the State Hermitage .
St. Petersburg
A year later, Kulibin accepted the Tsarina's invitation. He was appointed head of the mechanical workshop of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Here he developed a bridge model that consisted of just one arch. The bridge was supposed to be 300 m long, but this project was never carried out, although the test of a reduced model in 1776 was successful. A commission consisting of Leonhard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli , among others , confirmed the correctness of his calculations and the possibility of building a 300 m long bridge according to Kulibin's model. Later designs of the bridge used the principle of Voronoi polygons , which, however, was not formulated mathematically until the middle of the 19th century. After a series of developments in the field of optics, the Russian inventor presented a headlamp which, despite a weak light source, emitted a lot of directed light. This construction was one of the few inventions of Kulibin that was actually used on a large scale to illuminate ships and large halls. Kulibin hoped that another invention would revolutionize transportation. He designed and constructed a ship that used the current of a river to go towards her. This specimen, called Wodochod, has also been successfully tested several times and found to be good, as it moved faster than rowboats or burlaki with higher loads and only needed one man to operate it. This man in particular had to be well trained, which, in connection with the manufacturing costs of such a ship, led to the project being rejected. Kulibin's encounter with an officer who had amputated the leg gave him the idea of making prostheses , which he distributed free of charge to people who needed them. In 1801, Kulibin was dismissed from the Academy of Sciences. He returned to Nizhny Novgorod.
Return to Nizhny Novgorod
Here Kulibin continued to work as a developer. His areas of interest included agricultural machinery and shipping. Despite the former favor with Catherine the Great, Kulibin later lived in poverty. The reasons for this were that he had to pre-finance his inventions himself. Only when his inventions gained the favor of the court could he count on a reward. On the other hand, a fire destroyed his house in Nizhny Novgorod in 1813, causing him to lose his property.
Private
Since Kulibin came from an old Orthodox family, he did not smoke tobacco, drank alcohol, or played card games. He was married three times, the last time at the age of 70. This last marriage had three children. He had a total of 12 children, and he financed an education for all of them. Throughout his life he maintained his conservative way of life and neither did he trim his beard, nor did he wear Western clothing.
Most of his inventions were technically advanced, but were never put into practice, as their purpose was to replace human labor, which in Russia at the time of serfdom cost practically nothing; however, the construction of his machines was quite expensive. But inventions that amused the tsarina's court met with approval. For this purpose, Kulibin developed, for example, indoor fireworks that managed entirely without black powder.
Others
In Russian colloquial language it can happen that a skilled hobbyist who did not have any special training and still successfully repairs something is referred to as a Kulibin. The Kulibin Nunatak in Antarctica is named after him.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kulibin, Ivan Petrovich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Кулибин, Иван Петрович (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian watchmaker, mechanic, bridge builder and inventor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 21, 1735 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nizhny Novgorod |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 11, 1818 |