Karl Willy Wagner

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Karl Willy Wagner (born February 22, 1883 in Friedrichsdorf , Taunus ; † September 4, 1953 there ) was a German communications engineer and co-founder of the theory of electrical filters alongside George Ashley Campbell .

Life

Wagner was the son of Georg Wilhelm Wagner and Emilie Zeline, née Gauterin. The mother was a tradition- conscious Huguenot whose family , who immigrated from Champagne in 1690, was one of the founders of Friedrichsdorf.

After secondary school , his uncle Gustav Gauterin trained him in his mechanic's workshop on Bahnstrasse. He then began studying electrical engineering at the Bingen technical center in April 1900 and passed his engineering examination in 1902. During his student years in Bingen am Rhein he joined the Technisches Sängerkreis Loreley, today's Landsmannschaft Rheno-Teutonia , with which he remained connected until his death. He then took on a teaching position at the technical center in Bad Frankenhausen ( Thuringia ). In 1903 he published an article on the theory of electrical vibrations . From 1904 to 1908 he worked as a research engineer in the high-voltage laboratory at Siemens-Schuckertwerke in Berlin .

On April 1, 1909, on the recommendation of his doctoral supervisor, he received a job as a "temporary" telegraph engineer at the Imperial Telegraph Research Office in Berlin. He was commissioned here to improve the Bell telephone , which was still in use at the time , in order to be able to make phone calls over longer distances. Among other things, he worked in the areas of propagation of electrical currents in long cables ( traveling waves ) and dielectric aftereffects. Karl Strecker , the head of the Reich Post Office , who was involved in building the transoceanic network of telegraph cables, liked his essay, The Course of Telegraphic Signs in Long Cables , so much that he hired him. He set sail with the cable-laying steamer Stephan from Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke to lay cables between West Africa and Brazil .

Meanwhile doctorate he in 1910 at the University of Goettingen to the Dr. phil. with the dissertation The arc as an alternating current generator and completed his habilitation in 1912 at the Technical University of Berlin , where he was initially a private lecturer .

In 1913 (or autumn 1912) he was appointed professor and member of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt . He was entrusted with the management of the electrotechnical laboratories and researched here in the fields of traveling waves and the theory of chain conductors, which led him to the invention of the sieve chain in 1915 .

During the First World War he worked on improving wireless stations for airplanes and submarines and developed a method for secret telephony for the army . In 1917/18 he worked for Telefunken .

In December 1918 he returned to the service of the Reichspost and became director of the Telegraph Experimental Office. He now made attempts at multiple telephony and introduced the carrier frequency method at Deutsche Post . This procedure helped to rebuild the long-distance traffic that collapsed during the First World War. With the organization of research Wagner became as well known as with his experimental research in the field of radio technology.

After Strecker's retirement, he was president of the successor institute, the Telegraph-Technisches Reichsamt, from 1923 to 1927.

In 1924 he founded the journal electrical communications technology .

At the TH Berlin, where he taught at the same time, he was appointed honorary professor in 1925 . In October 1926 he wrote a memorandum (now lost) for the creation of an institute for researching electrical and acoustic vibrations. In August 1927 he was endowed professor for general vibration theory at the TH Berlin and entrusted with the establishment of the institute for vibration research, which was inaugurated on March 7, 1930 under the name Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI, Franklinstrasse 1). As its director, he worked on the analysis of sounds and noise, replicating vowels, ionosphere, etc.

When he studied formants intensively in the spring of 1933 , Winston E. Kock and Oskar Vierling were his assistants.

Three years after the seizure of power by the National Socialists his career broke off abruptly. Since he refused to fire Jewish employees, he was removed from office in 1936 and removed from his position as director of the institute.

The physicist and mathematician Alfred Thoma, who was Karl Willy Wagner's assistant from 1934 to 1936 and later co-editor of the journal Archiv der Elektrische Transmission , described the details of the dismissal by the National Socialists in his autobiography. Since he was the only one present to stand up for Wagner at the tribunal staged by the National Socialists in the Audimax of the Heinrich Hertz Institute, he was also immediately dismissed by the National Socialists. Both were close friends until the end of their lives.

Wagner then worked as a private teacher in Thuringia.

From 1943 to 1945 he worked as a consultant on scientific issues for the Research, Inventions and Patents Office Group in the High Command of the Navy . After the collapse he was appointed by the US military government in 1945 to chair a planning committee with the task of rebuilding the postal and telecommunications system in the then bizone . After completing this work, he devoted himself entirely to his scientific work.

Since 1937 he had been vehemently, but initially unsuccessfully, campaigning for the establishment of a memorial in the former home of Philipp Reis in Friedrichsdorf . It was only when the demolition was imminent in 1951 that he was able to win over many Friedrichsdorf residents as well as the Physical Society and the Frankfurt Post Office for his idea. The memorial was opened on October 27, 1952 and has since been incorporated into the city ​​museum .

After the death of his sister Ella, widow of the baker Ludwig Schmitt, he inherited the house in Friedrichsdorf at Hugenottenstrasse 61, which he moved into with his wife. Here he was involved in various associations, especially the German Huguenot Association , and took over the chairmanship of the tourist office.

In 1949 a collection of lectures was published under the title Construction and Origin of Space . In the same year he took over the office of President of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, the forerunner of the University of Mainz , which he co-founded and at which he took an honorary professorship in 1951.

He was also a member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin , an honorary doctorate from the University of Stockholm and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering and Honorary President of the Technical University of Darmstadt. In 1953 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit with a Star . On September 3, 1953, he died of a heart attack early in the morning .

Awards

Works

  • Electromagnetic compensation processes in overhead lines and cables. Teubner, Leipzig 1908.
  • Dielectric properties of various insulating materials. (Message from the Imperial Telegraph Research Office.) Springer, Berlin 1914.
  • Induction effects of converter waves in neighboring lines. (Communication from the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt.) Springer, Berlin 1914.
  • Via precision resistors for high-frequency alternating current. (Communication from the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt. 2nd communication.) Springer, Berlin 1915.
  • The scientific foundations of radio reception. Springer, Berlin 1927.
  • Les Propriétés des matières isolantes électrotechniques et leur mesure. Paris 1932.
  • The noise-free house. VDI, Berlin 1934.
  • A new electrical speech device to simulate human vowels. Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences, Berlin 1936.
  • Operator calculation along with applications in physics and technology. Barth, Leipzig 1940.
  • Introduction to the theory of vibrations and waves. Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Wiesbaden 1947.
  • Construction and creation of the universe. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1949.
  • with W. Kossel and F. Hund: The molecule and the structure of matter. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1949.
  • Operator calculation and Laplace transformation together with applications in physics and technology. 3. Edition. Edited by Alfred Thomas. Barth, Leipzig 1962.
  • Electromagnetic waves; An introduction to the theory as a basis for its application in electrical transmission technology. Birkhäuser, Basel 1953.
  • Electrical transmission archive. Volume 4 (1950), Volume 15 (1961), Volume 16 (1962).

literature

  • Erika Dittrich: Calendar. The Friedrichsdorf City Archive presents personalities from Friedrichsdorf and its districts. In: Yearbook Hochtaunuskreis. Vol. 15, 2007, ISSN  0943-2108 , pp. 220-243.
  • Erika Dittrich: Prof. Dr. Karl Willy Wagner. A life between tradition and innovation. In: Friedrichsdorfer Schriften. Vol. 3, 2003/2004, 2003, pp. 32-51.
  • Marianne Peilstöcker: Professor Dr. Karl Willy Wagner [1883-1953]. In: Yearbook Hochtaunuskreis. Vol. 11, 2003 (2002), ISSN  0943-2108 , pp. 96-103.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard Gerster: 100 years of the Rheno-Teutonia Landsmannschaft
  2. ↑ See The Imperial Telegraph Research Office. In: Telefunken newspaper. 3rd vol., No. 13, 1914, pp. 7-9. (PDF file; 2.12 MB)
  3. ↑ s. 25 years of Telefunken, Festschrift 1928
  4. ↑ ENT, successor: Archive of Electrical Transmission (AEÜ)
  5. ↑ Details on the dismissal of Karl Willy Wagner in 1936 in the unpublished autobiography of his assistant Alfred Thoma ( online )
personal data
SURNAME Wagner, Karl Willy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Friedrichsdorf
DATE OF DEATH 4th September 1953
Place of death Friedrichsdorf