Josef Ressel

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Josef Ressel

Josef Ludwig Franz Ressel ( Czech Josef Ludvík František Ressel ; Slovenian Jože Ressel , born June 29, 1793 in Chrudim ( Bohemia ); † October 9, 1857 in Laibach ; today: Ljubljana, Slovenia) was an Austrian-Bohemian forest clerk and inventor .

Ressel was one of the inventors of the ship's propeller (alongside John Ericsson and Francis Pettit Smith ; Robert Fulton and David Bushnell already had propellers on their submarines), and he was the one who brought it to technical maturity. At that time it was also known as a ship's propeller because it was similar to the Archimedean propeller .

Live and act

education and study

Memorial plaque on the former grammar school on the Linzer Pfarrplatz, which he attended

Josef Ressel, son of the German-Bohemian kk toll collector Anton Hermann Ressel (* 1762) and his Czech wife Marie Anna Konvičková, who came from the Friedland district and was resident in Chrudim , attended grammar school in Linz , Upper Austria , from 1806 and was a pupil from 1809 to 1811 State Artillery School in Budweis . Due to his weak physical constitution, however, he was of no use as a soldier. From 1812 to 1814 he studied at the (then technical subjects teaching) University of Vienna , among others, mechanics , hydraulics and civil architecture. During his time in Vienna, 1812, he designed a propeller as a means of propulsion for ships. Since Ressel's parents became impoverished in the wake of the Napoleonic turmoil , he could no longer attend the new kk polytechnic institute, which opened in November 1815, to further deepen his interests . He applied for a scholarship at the Mariabrunn Forest Academy , but was rejected as "too weak". A compatriot from Chrudim, Ressels, was the personal servant of Emperor Franz I and presented him with a lifelike sketch of the Battle of Leipzig drawn by Ressel . The emperor was so taken with the work that he paid its creator a grant from his private box - and Ressel graduated with distinction in 1817.

After his training, Ressel received a post as a district forester in Pletriach ( Pleterje in Slovenian ) in the Lower Carniola and was therefore responsible for 1/3 of all Unterkrainer forests. He was an advocate of the forest sustainability principle and made suggestions for karst afforestation . After the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), with which to Trieste and Venice came under Austrian rule, was the Empire of Austria the Imperial Navy in the Mediterranean established. Large forests were laid out as wood suppliers for the imperial shipyards . These forests were supervised and cared for by Austrian forest officials, including Josef Ressel. In 1821 he was appointed imperial royal naval forest manager of the coastal domain inspection in Trieste. For example, crooked wood for frames and other structural parts of ships was extracted from oak stocks . He repeatedly made suggestions for improvements to superiors, for example for new calculation formulas, measuring instruments, and road networks and was therefore soon seen as a troublemaker. In his spare time he continued to work on his ship's propeller. Relocation to the port city of Trieste also gave Ressel the opportunity to continue his model tests in practice. However, it met with widespread rejection from shipowners and shipowners who wanted to continue to use sails or paddlewheels as a drive.

Successful attempts ...

The reverse of the 500 Schilling banknote from 1966 shows the steamship Civetta , which is powered by a Ressel screw .

The two Italian merchants Julian and Tossitti leaving Ressel, the promise, the production costs for the propeller to take itself, a unrigged Bark . He had the mechanic Hermann build a ship's propeller with a diameter of half a meter. The practical tests with this screw driven by a hand crank were successful. On February 11, 1827, Ressel received a patent ( Privilegium ) in Austria

the invention of a wheel resembling a screw without end, which 1) set in motion in the water by some external driving force, to pull ships on the sea, on lakes, and even on rivers, then 2) for ships and windmills, as a driving wheel applicable be .

His efforts to finance the patent failed, as did the attempt to found an Austrian screw steamship company.

Experimental ship Civetta (model) - Technical Museum Vienna

Disappointed, Ressel withdrew to his forestry office. In April 1829 he took a trip to Paris and had another ship's propeller built there, which he successfully presented to an enthusiastic audience. Since Ressel had failed to conclude a contract with the French company responsible for the use of the screw, others seized his invention without letting him benefit from the success.

In Austria one again became aware of Ressel's invention after the successes in Paris. In Trieste, 1827–1829, the Odorico Panfilli shipyard built the steamship Civetta ( Italian for owl) powered by a six HP (4.4  kW ) steam engine using a Ressel screw with a diameter of 1.58 m . The ship had an experimental character and can be viewed as a sailing steamer . The first test run on July 1st of that year was initially successful at a speed of six knots (11 km / h), but then had to be stopped after a soft-soldered steam pipe broke. After this failure, the critics of Ressels got the police chief of Trieste to ban the repair of the machine and the prohibition of the continuation of the experiments with the Civetta . Ressel went to court immediately against the ban, but the process dragged on for years and the court costs ruined him. He was also transferred from Trieste to a new inland service ( Motovun in Istria).

... without recognition

500 Schilling banknote (1966) with a portrait of Josef Ressel
The Ressel monument in Resselpark, Vienna 4.
Monument to Ressel in Chrudim

When the British screw steamer “Archimedes” came to Trieste in 1840 , Ressel traveled to the city again. In the ship built by Francis Pettit Smith in 1838, he found his ideas and concepts implemented without having obtained the recognition he deserved. Ressel went home bitterly.

Smith played a major role in the introduction and spread of the propeller in ocean shipping , but was not the inventor of it. Therefore, the British government in 1852 wrote a prize of 20,000 pounds sterling for the "true inventor of the propeller" of that but then had to prove his invention. Ressel then sent all of his documents to the British Admiralty in London , but never received a reply. Upon request via diplomatic channels, it was announced that the documents had been "lost". The prize was eventually split between five Britons.

Disappointed retired Josef Ressel completely, remained forester - he described himself as a "Ranger without forest" - and died during a mission in Ljubljana on malaria (according to other sources of typhoid fever ), where he in the former inn Bavarian court (today only Area "Bavarski dvor") and stayed away from the restaurant with chills. He was buried 600 m northeast of it in the former St. Christoph cemetery (Slovenian: pokopališče pri sv. Krištofu ), which was closed in 1926 and destroyed in 1955. From 1936 to 1940, tombstones of famous people were transferred to the adjacent Navje Memorial Park (Slovenian: Spominski park Navje ). The core of this memorial, a hundred meters north of the train station, is a thirty-meter-long neoclassical arcade with high columns in the back wall of which tombstones for about 30 people are embedded. Ressel's tombstone can also be seen here.

It was only years later that Ressel and his invention received posthumous appreciation. Today he is considered to be the most famous Austrian-Bohemian forester.

First working ship's propeller, model of the Vienna Technical Museum

family

On a business trip he met a woman named Jakobine, with whom he married after a few weeks. She soon gave birth to a child and they had three children in total. Jakobine died of tuberculosis before February 1827 . The youngest child, a girl, also died soon afterwards.

His second wife Therese died on March 31, 1872 in Graz .

Appreciation

The Czech writer Zdeněk Pluhař set Ressel a literary monument with the novel The Bronze Spiral (1957) . In Vienna, the Resselpark on Karlsplatz , north of the main building of the Technical University, was named after him, where a memorial was erected in his honor in 1863 (the one intended for Trieste). In the 14th district of Vienna , near the former Academy of Forestry (now the Research and Training Center for Forests, Natural Hazards and Landscape, BFW) Josef-Ressel Street was named after him. A memorial (stele with inscriptions (spelling: "Joseph"), decorative plaque with ship's propeller and anchor and a bronze bust on top) stood until 2015 in the former forest botanical garden of the Forest Academy (today the Mariabrunn experimental garden of the BFW and in Vienna 14), commemorating its time (up to 1816 or 1817) as a Mariabrunn forest pupil and was transferred to the Ort forestry training center in Gmunden , Johann-Orth-Allee 16 (on the Traunsee near Insel-Schloss Ort). In 1862 in Wieden (4th district) the small street west of the main building of the Vienna University of Technology was named after him Resselgasse.

Another street across Waagner-Biro- Strasse in Graz- Gösting is called Resselgasse, there are others in Weiz and Oberwart ; in Dornbirn and Hohenems . A Resselstrasse can be found in Linz- Ebelsberg, Innsbruck (am Inn), St. Pölten , Tulln an der Donau , Wöllersdorf , Wolkersdorf in the Weinviertel , Sierning , in Villach ; Kirchdorf an der Krems , Marchtrenk , Schwanenstadt ; a Josef-Ressel-Gasse in Kindberg , a Josef-Ressel-Weg in Leibnitz . A Resselweg is in Velden am Wörther See , a Josef-Ressel-Gasse in Fohnsdorf and in St. Stefan ob Leoben . Josef-Ressel-Strasse can be found in Salzburg , Klagenfurt , Attnang-Puchheim and Steyr .

In Germany there is a Resselstrasse in Recklinghausen and Ketsch , a Resselsteig in Berlin , a Resselweg in Markgröningen and Ottobrunn (near Munich). In the South Tyrolean provincial capital Bolzano there is a Josef-Ressel-Straße in the district of Oberau-Haslach . In the Slovenian coastal town of Piran , an alley bears his name, as does the square in front of the city gate of Motovun . There are two street names in Trieste: Via Josip Ressel is not far from the industrial port in the south-east of the city, Via Giuseppe Ressel is not far from the port freight station, closer to the center. The Via Giuseppe Ressel in Gorizia on the Isonzo is located 20 kilometers northwest of Trieste. Ressel Avenue Anchorage , Alaska and Ressel Lane, Rocky Mount, Missouri (directly on the lake) are two occurrences in the USA.

The grammar school in Chrudim, the birthplace of Ressel (now the Czech Republic ), bears his name. There is also a larger-than-life bronze statue on a granite base in the square in front of the Chrudim Museum of Local History. This monument was created by Ladislav Šaloun in 1924. The Museo del Mare (Maritime Museum) in Trieste, which has taken over important exhibits from the former naval museum of the kuk Seearsenal from Pola / Pula , dedicates a room to the work of Josef Ressel and his invention of the ship propeller.

His shipbuilding achievements were also recognized in the GDR . The company vocational school (BBS) of the VEB Roßlauer Schiffswerft in Roßlau on the Elbe in Saxony-Anhalt was called Josef Ressel.

The portrait of Ressel can be seen on the 500 schilling banknote from 1966. On the back there is a depiction of the steamship Civetta driven by a shelling screw .

The series ingenious researchers and inventors within the ZDF series Terra X dedicates the film Treason in Trieste: Test drive with horror to the test drive of the Civetta 2009 .

On February 19, 2016, the Austrian Post issued an 80-cent special stamp Austrian Inventions - Ship's propeller by Josef Ressel , designed by David Gruber . The sheetlet with ten stamps printed in the Netherlands shows various views of ships and an autograph facsimile by Ressel on the margins.

Postage stamps have already appeared earlier: On December 6, 1936, a dark blue 12 (+12) Groschen postage stamp was issued in Austria (as the 1st of the series Inventors ) Josef Ressel - screw steamer Civetta 1829 with his portrait and the ship's stern with screw in the background, designed by Wilhelm Dachauer and engraved by Ferdinand Lorber.

On July 5, 1957, a medium blue 60-hour stamp with a similar motif was issued in Czechoslovakia , definitive 3 from the Inventor series, designed by Jan Mracek, engraved by K. Tondl.

The Josef Ressel Forest Prize for Forester of the City of Vienna and the Josef Ressel Center of the Pinkafeld University of Applied Sciences are also named after him.

In 2019 the Slovenian weekly newspaper Dolenjski list reported on plans to rebuild the former wooden bridge over the Krka River near Mršeča vas (near Šentjernej ). This concrete-steel construction is said to be named after Josef Ressel, who is said to have made the first attempts in the vicinity with a boat driven by a propeller. According to the report, this propeller is said to have "allegedly" been made in the forge of the Carthusian monastery in Pleterje.

More inventions

Similar to the ship's propeller, Ressel developed windmills with a vertical shaft. This should cause the wind turbine to work regardless of the wind direction. He wanted to use it to irrigate the plateaus on the Nile in Egypt .

What is less well known is that, among other things, he developed a pneumatic tube system, which he began in 1827 and brought to maturity in 1847. In the field of chemistry, he invented a novel method of making soap and a heating medium for steam engines . He also received the first Austrian patent for the roller bearing in 1829 , a forerunner of the ball bearing .

Remarks

  1. ↑ On January 26, 1858, five months after Ressel's death, after another previous reclamation , a letter was received in Trieste in which the British Admiralty finally announced that the bonus had been awarded once and nothing could be changed . - See: Miscellaneous. Joseph Ressel. In:  Die Presse , first edition, No. 80/1859, April 9, 1858, p. 4 (unpaginated) middle. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / maintenance / apr.
    On January 4, 1867, the London trade journal The Engineer ( ZDB -ID 240457-6 ) published the main part of the patent from November 28, 1826, once submitted by Ressel for the prize, thereby     admitting the existence of the documents. - See: Little Chronicle. (...) Rejected documents. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Abendblatt, No. 916/1867, March 19, 1867, p. 3 (unpaginated) bottom center. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp.

literature

Movie

  • Treason in Trieste. Documentation, Germany, 2008, 43 Min, written and directed. Axel Engstfeld, Production: ZDF , Row: Terra X , first broadcast: January 25, 2009 Summary of the ZDF and online video

Web links

Commons : Josef Ressel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Memorial stone with the Slovenian inscription (dative): Dem Ressl Jože: Jozefu Resslu
  2. ↑ Miran Rijavec: IMG_20140827_191245. August 27, 2014, accessed July 18, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b František Houdek: Quirk, screw, ships or from Bohemia by the sea to Trieste. Josef Ressel from the East Bohemian town of Chrudim invented the ship propeller . In: Pavel Šmíd (Red.): In the heart of Europe . No. 4/2006, ISSN  1211-9296 . Journal of the Czech Republic, Pardubice 2006, pp. 4-7. theo.cz (PDF; 2.3 MB).
  4. ↑ a b Reinhold Erlbeck, Ilse Haseder and Gerhard KF Stinglwagner: Das Kosmos Wald- und Forstlexikon . 3. Edition. Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 1998, p. 591, ISBN 3-440-07511-7
  5. ↑ The trick with the Terra X corkscrew , ZDF, January 25, 2009, accessed August 28, 2016.
  6. ↑ a b Exclusive Privileges. (…) To Joseph Ressl, woodruff of the kk coastal domain inspection in Trieste, (…). In:  (Imperial Royal Silesian) Troppauer Zeitung , appendix to Troppauer Zeitung , No. 61/1827, July 30, 1827, p. 636, bottom left. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / okf.
  7. ↑ a b The greats of technology> Joseph Ressel - A project by alumniTUGraz 1887. © 2016, accessed August 28, 2016.
  8. ↑ Relevant Non-Istrians: Josef Ressel istrianet.org, USA, page created June 2, 2005, last updated November 5, 2012, accessed August 28, 2016. - "This page is compliments of Marisa Ciceran and Guido Villa"
  9. ↑ Little Chronicle. Staff news. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Abendblatt, No. 2732/1872, April 3, 1872, p. 1, bottom left. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp.
  10. ^ Josef Ressel: Forester and inventor . (PDF) six-page folder, Forestry Training Center Ort des BFW, 2015/2016, accessed August 28, 2016. - Monument by site, Forest Academy "1st / 2nd year 1814/1815 completed with preference"
  11. ↑ Ingenious researchers and inventors: Treason in Trieste: Test drive with horror. - Vulnerable steam engine prevents Ressel's career.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.zdf.de   www.zdf.de, January 25, 2009, accessed August 28, 2016. - The picture "Gravestone" actually shows the Gmunden monument that stood in Mariabrunn (Vienna) until 2015 .
  12. ↑ Ingenious researchers and inventors: Treason in Trieste: The trick with the corkscrew  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.zdf.de   www.zdf.de, January 25, 2009, accessed August 28, 2016.
  13. ↑ Ship's propeller - Josef Ressel austria-forum.org,> Art and Culture> Stamps> 2016, accessed August 28, 2016.
  14. ↑ briefmarken-forum.com, special stamp "Schiffsrohr - Josef Ressel", Gerhard, January 7, 2016, accessed August 28, 2016. - EAN: 9-007266-236199.
  15. ↑ Postage stamp in honor of Josef Ressel ( Memento of the original from August 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. waldwissen.net, Federal Research and Training Center for Forests, Natural Hazards and Landscape (BFW), 2016, accessed August 28, 2016. - With a picture of the memorial at the former Mariabrunn Forest Academy . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.waldwissen.net
  16. ↑ catawiki.de
  17. ↑ catawiki.de
  18. ^ Ressel, Josef Austria-Forum> Biographien, accessed August 28, 2016.
  19. ↑ Most poimenovali po izumitelju Resslu (German bridge named after inventor Ressel, Dolenjski list , August 8, 2019, p. 16
  20. ↑ Resslov most v Resslovem letu? (German: A Resselbrücke in the Ressel year?), Dolensjki list, December 12, 2019, p. 27)
  21. ↑ Mathias Albert, Hubert Köttritsch: Bearings: Theory and Practice . Springer-Verlag, p. 390
  22. ↑ Terra X: Treason in Trieste (May 25, 2013, 10:55 p.m., 43:04 min.)  In the ZDFmediathek , accessed on January 30, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Ressel, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ressel, Josef Ludwig Franz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian forest officer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1793
PLACE OF BIRTH Chrudim , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 1857
Place of death Ljubljana , Ljubljana