Oscar Guttmann

Oscar Guttmann (born February 25, 1855 in Nagy-Becskerek , Voivodeship Serbia and Temeser Banat ; † August 2, 1910 in Brussels ) was an Austro-Hungarian chemist and chemical historian who worked in Great Britain and specialized in explosives chemistry.

Career

Guttman was an industrial chemist, first in a Ceresin factory and from 1875 in the explosives factory in Sankt Lambrecht . He then worked in a gun-cotton factory in Budapest , in Nobel's dynamite factory in Isleten , Switzerland, which supplied the explosives for the construction of the St. Gotthard Tunnel, and headed the Nobel dynamics factory in Avigliana . In addition, he was editor of the magazine Der Bergmann from 1878 and published a lot in magazines.

He came into contact with England in 1883 when he visited the country's explosives factories and published them in Dingler's Polytechnic Journal. In 1888 he started his own business as a consulting engineer for the explosives industry in Vienna. His first major assignment in the same year was to advise the National Explosives Company's factory in Hayle , Cornwall, and in 1888 he moved entirely to London. He became a leading explosives expert in the UK, but also advised with his engineering office in the rest of Europe. He also ran an explosives factory himself. In some of his inventions he worked with Ludwig Rohrmann .

He himself developed processes, for example for the concentration of sulfuric acid and improved production of nitric acid, and held patents for them, as well as for safety-related innovations in the manufacture of explosives (including reaction towers). He made his patents, which were used to increase safety in explosives factories, freely available. Guttmann died in a car accident in Brussels, where he was a British juror at the industrial exhibition.

He also dealt with the history of explosives. In 1904 he discovered the earliest European manuscript (from 1326) depicting a cannon in Oxford (see Walter de Milemete ). His splendid volume on the history of explosives, Monumenta Pulveris Pyrii , was published in a limited edition for subscribers. Guttmann owned one of the largest libraries on the history of explosives.

His books on explosives and explosives manufacture were standard works.

He was a member of the Society of Chemical Industry and twice on its council, was Vice President of the Institute of Chemistry and a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers .

Fonts

• The Explosives Industry, Vieweg 1895, Archives
• Blasting; a handbook for the use of engineers and others engaged in mining, tunneling, quarrying, etc., London: Charles Griffin 1892, 1906, Archive
• Handbook of blasting work, Vieweg 1892, 1906, Archives
• The manufacture of explosives; a theoretical and practical treatise on the history, the physical and chemical properties, and the manufacture of explosives, London: Whittaker and Co., 2 volumes, 1895, volume 1, archive , volume 2, archive
• Guns and explosives, Vieweg 1900, Archives
• Manufacture of Explosives: twenty years progress (Cantor Lectures at the Royal Society of Arts 1908)
• Monumenta Pulveris Pyrii, 1906

literature

• Obituary in Journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions, Volume 99, 1911, pp. 604-605