Ludwig Rohrmann

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Ludwig Rohrmann (born February 19, 1848 in Chrzonstowo , Schrimm district , Posen province ; † February 25, 1909 in Krauschwitz , Upper Lusatia ) was a German entrepreneur and inventor. He held a number of patents in the field of chemical engineering and applied for the world's first patent for a rocket for taking aerial photographs .

Life

Ludwig Rohrmann was born in 1848 as the son of Captain a. D. Johann Gottlieb Rohrmann and his wife Elise were born in the manor house in the village of Chrzonstowo near Schrimm in the province of Posen. His father's estate included a brick factory with a clay pit , which enabled him to come into contact with the raw material at an early age that shaped his future life. Rohrmann trained as a businessman and banking specialist in Leipzig, Breslau and Bremen.

Magazine advertising for products from Ludwig Rohrmann, including the Lunge Rohrmann plate tower

Building on this knowledge, he acquired the Scherhans & Co. crockery for sale in Krauschwitz in 1878 and founded the Ludwig Rohrmann pottery factory in Krauschwitz / near Muskau . From 1884 the company's production range shifted from household to industrial ceramics , especially acid-resistant stoneware for the rapidly growing chemical industry . He worked closely with the chemist Georg Lunge , professor at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich . In 1886 they jointly developed and patented the Lunge-Rohrmann plate tower , which was used in the production of sulfuric , nitric and hydrochloric acid . With the explosives manufacturer Oscar Guttmann (1855-1910) he developed the Guttmann-Rohrmann condensation apparatus and a process for the production of nitric acid.

Rohrmann made violins from clay in the 1880s . One of the 25 copies built is exhibited as a curiosity in the Markneukirchen Musical Instrument Museum .

In 1891, Ludwig Rohrmann had an idea protected that was at the beginning of the long series of inventions that led to today's remote sensing of the earth by satellite . His method of taking photographs of terrain from a bird's eye view using a cannon or rocket projectile , which he had patented in several European countries, was based on the idea of ​​transporting a leashed plate camera over the target area with the help of a cannon or a powder rocket and when sinking to have a series of photographs taken on the parachute . A spring mechanism coordinated with the flight time should trigger the recordings and change the plates. In 1892, Rohrmann described the camera's release mechanism in detail in another patent and replaced the photo plates with roll film . It is not known whether Rohrmann ever tried his invention, which was primarily intended to serve military purposes, in practice. However, his ideas were picked up in the first decade of the 20th century by the Dresden engineer Alfred Maul and further developed in a modified form into a sophisticated photo rocket .

In 1898 Rohrmann converted his company into a stock corporation , of which he was the sole director. In 1902 there was a merger with Ernst March & Sons, Charlottenburg and the pottery factory Dr. Plath, Dr. Staub and Piepmeyer, Kassel-Bettenhausen to the United Tonwarenwerke AG, Charlottenburg . Two years later, through the merger with Deutsche Tonröhren- und Chamottefabrik AG in Münsterberg / Silesia , Europe's largest manufacturer of stoneware sewer pipes, Deutsche Ton- und Steinzeugwerke Aktiengesellschaft was created . As one of the five board members, Rohrmann initially worked at the company's headquarters in Charlottenburg, but soon took over the management of the factory in Krauschwitz again. After handing over management to his son-in-law in 1908, Ludwig Rohrmann died in Krauschwitz in February 1909 and was buried in Fraustadt .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Helga Heinze, Holger Klein: The clever minds of DTS A.-G. (1): Ludwig Rohrmann (1848–1909) entrepreneur and inventor ( memento from September 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), June 23, 2008.
  2. ↑ Peter Fischer: The century of chemical-technical stoneware (PDF; 2.0 MB). In: Keramische Zeitschrift 01/2011, pp. 40–45
  3. ↑ Patent DE63799 : Apparatus for the condensation of nitric acid. Registered on June 23, 1891 , published on August 16, 1892 , inventors: Oscar Guttmann, Ludwig Rohrmann. ‌
  4. ↑ Patent DE73421 : Process for the production of pure nitric acid. Registered on December 24, 1891 , published on February 16, 1894 , inventors: Oscar Guttmann, Ludwig Rohrmann. ‌
  5. ^ Curt Sachs: Real Lexicon of Musical Instruments . Julius Bard, Berlin 1913, p. 138
  6. ↑ From matches to walking sticks - imaginative string instruments on the website of the Musikinstrumenten-Museum in Markneukirchen, accessed on October 19, 2012
  7. ↑ Patent DE64209 : Method for taking photographs of terrain from a bird's eye view by means of a cannon or rocket projectile. Registered on July 14, 1891 , published on September 6, 1892 , inventor: Ludwig Rohrmann. ‌
  8. ↑ Patent DE68089 : Apparatus for automatic production of a series of instantaneous images in certain time intervals. Registered on March 22, 1892 , published April 18, 1893 , inventor: Ludwig Rohrmann. ‌
  9. ^ Matthias Knopp: Alfred Maul's photo rocket (PDF; 3.5 MB). In: Ulf Hashagen, Oskar Blumtritt, Helmut Trisckler (eds.): Circa 1903. Artifacts when the Deutsches Museum was founded . Deutsches Museum, Munich 2003, pp. 450–472
  10. ↑ Holger Klein: The Deutsche Ton- und Steinzeugwerke A.-G. - From small business to industrial network ( Memento from June 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), August 14, 2008
  11. ^ Egbert Feuerriegel: Museum Sagar in the footsteps of Ludwig Rohrmann ( memento from October 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: Lausitzer Rundschau , April 29, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Rohrmann, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Chrząstowo (Książ Wielkopolski) , Schrimm District , Poznan Province
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1909
Place of death Krauschwitz