Jacob Mayer (manufacturer)

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Photo Jacob Mayers 1862
Jacob Mayer's grave in Kortumpark in Bochum

Jacob Mayer (born May 1, 1813 in Dunningen , Württemberg ; † July 30, 1875 in Bochum ) was a German steel manufacturer and inventor of modern cast steel .

Life

Mayer, son of a farmer, grew up in a rural environment. He had a great technical talent, which he expanded with working relationships in Cologne and England . He completed an apprenticeship as a watchmaker with his uncle in Cologne before he went to England as a worker. His uncle had experimented with steel crucible casting, and in England Mayer tried to learn about this process. Back in Germany, he first carried out experiments on steel crucible casting at his father's farm in Dunningen, which were probably successful on a small scale around 1836.

In 1854 he married Agnes Sieber (* 1812) from Bonn. The marriage remained childless.

From 1869 to 1875 Mayer was a member of the Bochum council. For the invention of the cast steel bells he received the Order of Gregorius . Mayer's widow donated four cast steel bells for the parish of St. Mary's Assumption in Cologne-Nippes in 1882 .

Entrepreneurship

Starting in 1839, Mayer was the first in Germany to produce cast steel in Cologne-Nippes using a process known in England, for which he entered into a partnership with the iron and steel company Eberhard Hoesch . However, disputes about location issues and the use of the better quality coal from the Ruhr area soon led to the separation from Hoesch.

Then, together with the businessman Eduard Kühne , Mayer founded the Mayer and Kühne cast steel factory in Bochum in 1842 , which began production in 1845, and refined cast steel . As early as 1853, the factory could produce steel castings of up to 7,000 pounds. Initially, the customers of the foundry's products were tool factories in the Bergisch-Mark region. A lack of capital led in 1854 to the transformation of the company into a stock corporation under the name Bochumer Verein , of which Mayer became the technical director.

In 1852, Mayer's work presented bells made of cast steel for the first time at the Düsseldorf trade exhibition. However, the new casting process was only able to establish itself on the market from the Paris World Exhibition in 1855 , at which the Bochum Association was awarded a gold medal for its cast steel bells, and was used in particular in the manufacture of railway material such as locomotive and wagon wheels.

In Mayer's last years, the Bochum association employed 4,500 people. A street is named after him in the former workers' housing estate in Stahlhausen , which lies between two former parts of the Bochum association's factory.

literature

  • Walter Bertram: Jacob Mayer. The inventor of cast steel. On the 125th anniversary of his birthday on May 1, 1938. VDI-Verlag, Berlin 1938.
  • Walter Bertram: Jacob Mayer (1813-1875) . In: Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographien. Volume VI. Aschendorff, Münster 1954, pp. 36–59.
  • Adalbert Frensdorff:  Mayer, Jacob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 543 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Martin Otto: What Krupp did in Essen is forgotten here. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. October 25, 2011.
  • Wilbs Julius: "An artist and a technician: Landolin Ohnmacht and Jacob Mayer" in "Heimat an der Eschach", Sigmaringen 1986, Thorbecke
  • Martin Rudzinski: Jacob Mayer and Bochum. A contribution to a difficult relationship. In: Bochum time points . No. 31, 2013, pages 20-36

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=fer-001:1958:-::22#5
personal data
SURNAME Mayer, Jacob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mayer, Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Dunningen , Württemberg
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1875
Place of death Bochum