Nikolaus Schalkenbach

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Nikolaus Josef Schalkenbach (born September 9, 1848 in Rosport ; † April 12, 1925 in Trier ) was an electrical engineer and inventor in the field of electricity .

Life

Nikolaus Schalkenbach, called "Dän elektrijen Nikela" in his hometown Trier, was the son of the respected Trier merchant Paul Schalkenbach and his wife Robertine Loser from Rosport. He saw the light of day on the Irminenhof in Rosport. He spent his youth in Trier, where he initially devoted himself to a commercial profession in the Reul-Schalkenbach office building on the main market. Even as a secondary school student, supported and encouraged by his physics teacher, Professor Johann Martin Beckmann, he experimented in the field of electrical engineering, which was still in its infancy. In the workshops of the Wittek brothers, Fahrstrasse 10, across from the city theater, he was able to manufacture individual parts and assemble them together.

Around 1881 he actively supported his cousins ​​Hubert and Henri Tudor from Rosport with the installation of an electrical lighting system in the local Irminenhof, the first in Luxembourg . In addition to a dynamo of the Gramme type , which was powered by the Bannmühle, the circuit included a lead-acid battery with rigid lead plates with a ribbed surface designed by Henri Tudor and Edison 's light bulbs. The accumulator compensated for current fluctuations and stored the current when it was not needed.

On the occasion of the Trier Catholic Assembly in 1885 on the grounds of the Catholic Citizens' Association and the adjacent cattle marketplace, Schalkenbach constructed a system consisting of an electrical center set up in Südallee, overhead lines on wooden masts and several arc lamps that emitted a dazzling bright light.

In the same year 1885, Schalkenbach contacted Adolph Müller , commercial representative of the electrotechnical factory Spiecker & Co. from Cologne, on several occasions , to point out the first usable lead-acid battery, which had already been working fault-free for several years on the Irminenhof in Rosport. It is thanks to Schalkenbach's reprint that Müller moved to Rosport to see the quality of the Tudor accumulator for himself. Thus, Schalkenbach has a great merit in a development that led to the founding of a global corporation in 1890, the Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft (AFA) , later Varta AG .

In 1886, together with the brothers Hubert and Henri Tudor, Schalkenbach founded the company Gebrüder Tudor & Schalkenbach in Rosport , which immediately began manufacturing Tudor batteries for public lighting in the city of Echternach .

Various authors from Trier, above all Josef Linck, express the assumption, without substantiating them, that the Tudor electrode was an invention of Schalkenbach; Henri Tudor merely served as the namesake when the patent was applied for in 1886. It can be countered by the fact that Adolph Müller, who knew Schalkenbach well and is regarded as an extremely reliable reporter, always refers exclusively to Henri Tudor as the inventor and expert in his chronicle published in 1913.

Nikolaus Schalkenbach created a reliable electricity meter that was later further developed by Hermann Aron and others. Such electricity meters were manufactured in the Tudor factory in Rosport.

Appreciation

In view of his great services in electrical engineering, the Electrotechnical Association Trier appointed Nikolaus Schalkenbach as an honorary member.

On March 14, 1952, the city administration of Trier named a new street between Eurener and Udostraße after Nikolaus Schalkenbach.

literature

Josef Linck: Nikolaus Josef Schalkenbach, an inventor from Trier . In: Trierisches Jahrbuch . 1955, p. 111-114 .

Adolph Müller: 25 years of Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1913 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin 1913.

Wolfgang Schmid, Nikolaus Schalkenbach (1848-1925). An engineer, entrepreneur and inventor from Trier . In: Trier-Saarburg District Yearbook 2010, pp. 130-141

Henri Werner, Ernest Reiter: Henri Owen Tudor. L'impact d'une idée . Ed .: Les Amis du Musée Henri Tudor asbl. 2009, ISBN 978-99959-6290-6 .

Henri Werner, Ernest Reiter: Henri Owen Tudor. An Idea ... and Where it Led . Ed .: Les Amis du Musée Henri Tudor asbl. 2012, ISBN 978-99959-6291-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Josef Linck: Nikolaus Josef Schalkenbach, a Trier inventor . In: Trierisches Jahrbuch . 1955, p. 111-114 .
  2. ^ Henri Werner, Ernest Reiter: Henri Owen Tudor. L'impact d'une idée . Ed .: Les Amis du Musée Henri Tudor asbl. Rosport 2009, ISBN 978-99959-6290-6 , pp. 53-55 .
  3. ^ Adolph Müller: 25 years of the Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1913 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin 1913, p. 1-2 .
  4. ^ Josef Linck: Nikolaus Josef Schalkenbach. a Trier inventor . In: Trierisches Jahrbuch . 1955, p. 111 .
  5. ^ Adolph Müller: 25 years of the Accumulatoren-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft 1888-1913 . Ed .: AFA. Berlin 1913, p. 1-2, 53-54, 82-84 .
personal data
SURNAME Schalkenbach, Nikolaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schalkenbach, Nikolaus Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Electrical engineer and pioneer in the field of electricity
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Rosport
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1925
Place of death trier