Otto Toepfer & Son
| Otto Toepfer & Son | |
|---|---|
| legal form | |
| founding | 1873 |
| resolution | 1919 |
| Seat | Potsdam, German Empire |
The Otto Toepfer & Sohn company was a renowned precision mechanics and optics company based in Potsdam in the German Empire . In 1919 it was taken over by the Carl Bamberg company and merged with the Askania works .
history
Foundation by Otto Toepfer
Otto Toepfer (1845–1914) did an apprenticeship with the mechanic P. Barrand in Berlin . During this time he also attended courses in drawing , mathematics , physics and technology . After completing his apprenticeship in 1864, he worked as an assistant a. a. in the workshops Pistor & Martins and Franz Schmidt & Haensch in Berlin and Schieckert in Dresden . In 1867 he attended the Paris World Exhibition with a state grant . From 1870 to 1873 Toepfer was Edmund Hartnack's assistant in Potsdam. In 1873 he founded his own workshop and was initially mainly a Hartnack supplier.
After the Astrophysical Observatory (AOP) was founded on the Potsdam Telegrafenberg on July 1, 1874 , Toepfer succeeded in repeatedly receiving orders for the manufacture of the necessary instruments in the years that followed. He worked particularly closely with Hermann Carl Vogel , observer at the AOP from 1874 and director from 1882, who highly valued Toepfer's skill and expertise. Toepfer produced a series of successively improved spectrographs based on the plans of Vogel and his colleague Johannes Franz Hartmann , with which the radial speeds of stars were measured and the spectroscopic binary stars were discovered. Toepfer obtained the optical parts from Carl August von Steinheil in Munich . To test the sensitivity of the photo layers of its spectrograph, he developed a sensitometer by Julius Scheiner . For the evaluation of the spectra he constructed a measuring microscope according to Vogel's information. Toepfer also manufactured innovative instruments for photometry . He constructed registering wedge photometers and further developed the Zöllner photometer . The high international reputation of the AOP was also due to Toepfer's excellent precision instruments.
Continuation by Reinhold Toepfer
In 1896 Otto Toepfer handed over the technical management of the company, who at that time employed about ten assistants and twelve apprentices, to his son Reinhold (1873–1951). In 1900 the company name (company) was changed to Otto Toepfer & Sohn, workshops for scientific instruments and in 1910 Otto Toepfer retired from the management. Reinhold Toepfer did an apprenticeship with his father and then worked as an assistant at Carl Zeiss in Jena . It is thanks to him that the Meteorological-Magnetic Observatory Potsdam, founded in 1891, was soon one of the company's customers. Toepfer equipped the Antarctic expeditions Erich von Drygalskis and Robert Falcon Scotts in 1901, as well as the polar expedition Roald Amundsen in 1902, with magnetic instruments that had been manufactured according to the plans of the first director of the observatory Max Eschenhagen . Even Alfred Wegener used on the Danmark Expedition 1906-1908 in Greenland a magnetometer Count Toepfer. When the Magnetic Observatory, disturbed by the other facilities on the Telegrafenberg, moved to Seddin in 1906, Toepfer supplied most of the instruments according to Adolf Schmidt's plans .
Otto Toepfer & Sohn was also a supplier to the other scientific institutes in Potsdam. She manufactured a five-meter comparator for the Royal Prussian Geodetic Institute . The move of the Berlin observatory to Potsdam-Babelsberg was carried out by Toepfer, who also supplied an astrograph and a passage instrument. According to Friedrich Kühnen (1858–1940), the first German tide calculator was built in 1915 on behalf of the Reichsmarineamt .
Although the company was internationally respected and won prizes for its instruments (Grand Prix at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904 as well as a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Milan in 1906 ), it repeatedly ran into economic difficulties and had to go to its most important client , request the state for larger advances that were regularly granted. When there were no orders after the First World War , bankruptcy proceedings had to be opened in 1919 . Otto Toepfer & Sohn was taken over by the Carl Bamberg company in the same year and became part of Askania Werke AG in 1921.
literature
- Jörg Zaun: Instruments for Science. Innovations in Berlin precision mechanics and optics 1871–1914. Publishing house for science and regional history, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-929134-39-X .
Web links
- Trichina microscope by Otto Toepfer & Sohn in the Museum of Optical Instruments
- Sales catalogs from Otto Toepfer & Sohn: 1904 1906a 1906b 1907
Individual evidence
- ^ Diedrich Fritzsche: Potsdam geoscientists and their influence on German and international polar research up to the 2nd polar year 1932/33. In: Polar Research. 61, 1991, pp. 153-162. (PDF file; 1.07 MB)