Ludwig Georg Treviranus

Ludwig Georg Treviranus (born March 7, 1790 in Bremen ; † November 7, 1869 in Brno ) was a German engineer and mechanic .

biography

Treviranus was the son of the merchant Joachim Johann Jacob Treviranus and Catharina Margarethe Talla. His father lost his fortune and became a notary in 1795 and an average dispatcher in 1803 . Treviranus was the brother of the doctor and naturalist Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus and the botanist Ludolph Christian Treviranus .

In 1806, with the help of the astronomer Olbers , a family friend, he came to the inventor and engineer Georg Friedrich von Reichenbach in Munich . There he worked in the workshop that von Reichenbach ran with Joseph von Utzschneider and Joseph von Fraunhofer , manufacturing optical devices, especially telescopes .

In 1814 he went to Slough in England to deepen his knowledge of optics with the well-known German-British astronomer Wilhelm Herschel . Contrary to plan, during this time, however, he mainly dealt with the study of the functionality and construction of steam engines .

Back in Bremen, he contacted the businessman Friedrich Schröder when he heard of his plans to operate a steamship on the Weser. As an engineer, he became part of Schröder's company and traveled to England and Scotland in 1816 with him and with master shipbuilder Johann Lange and captain Zacharias Spilcker to look for suitable ships for sale. When they couldn't find a suitable ship, the decision was made to build their own steamship: the Weser . They ordered the machine for this from Boulton & Watt .

After the completion of the The Weser , Treviranus traveled several times to England in 1817 and 1818 in connection with the construction of Schröder's second steamship - The Duke of Cambridge . After test drives of this ship, which was supposed to operate on the Oberweser, it became clear, however, that the performance of the machine was insufficient for the current conditions there. Since the calculation of the required propulsive power of the ship was based on flow measurements with a device called Woltmann's wing , Treviranus worked intensively on improving this measuring instrument.

On behalf of Senator Johann Gildemeister , he also worked on plans for the city water pipeline in Bremen and built various technical systems a. a. a color wood mill . In 1823 he went to Breslau , where his brother Ludolph Christian worked as a professor of botany. He first worked here in a machine factory before he accepted a position as a factory inspector at the Fürstlich Salm-Reifferscheidschen ironworks in Blansko (Moravia) in 1830 .

literature

• Historical society of the artists' association (ed.): Bremische Biographie des 19. Century . Winter, Bremen 1912. (Reprint: Schünemann, Bremen 1976, ISBN 3-7961-1683-3 )