Paul Haenlein

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Paul Haenlein
Airship Aeolus

Paul Haenlein (born October 17, 1835 in Mainz , † January 27, 1905 in Mainz) was a German inventor and pioneer of airship travel .

Life

Paul Haenlein was the son of the Mainz ship's captain Johann Baptist Haenlein and his wife Wilhelmine, née Poirez. The family had been running a fish export business since 1764. After completing secondary school and a broken off model carpentry apprenticeship, he learned mechanical engineering at the Rupp company . He then completed a degree in mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic in Karlsruhe . As a mechanical engineer he worked at Kölnische Maschinenbau AG in Bayenthal until 1861 and then moved to Stockholm . In 1864 he got a job as a machine designer in London. During this time he developed the idea of ​​an airship powered by a gas engine and thus steerable . The required power gas should be taken from the balloon envelope. On April 1, 1865, he received a patent for this invention.

In 1868 Haenlein returned to Mainz and began to build a scaled-down model of his airship. With a length of ten meters, the balloon body had a diameter of more than two meters. Haenlein presented the model to the Mainz public on October 5, 1871 in the Fruchthalle . Although the demonstration was successful, he was unable to find private donors to build a large airship.

He had more success in Vienna with a second model. After two presentations in the large Redoutensaal of the Vienna Hofburg and in the Sofiensäle , Haenlein was able to set up a company "for the purpose of making a large person-carrying balloon" with the help of the Lower Austrian Trade Association . In 1872 the 50 meter long airship Aeolus was built. The cover was made by Reithoffer in Wimpassing . Because Haenlein in Wiener Neustadt did not receive city gas for filling the balloon, the first test of the airship took place on December 13, 1872 in Brno . The luminous gas used for filling turned out to be too heavy. After Haenlein had quickly replaced the large cooling water reservoirs with an emergency cooler, the airship rose to a height of up to 20 meters. Loosely held by soldiers on ropes, it reached a speed of 18 km / h, more than any airship before, and could therefore also be steered against the wind. There was no further development of the airship, since Haenlein could not raise any further funds after the Viennese founder crash of 1873 and the company dissolved.

Shortly afterwards, Haenlein was employed by the Sulzer machine factory in Winterthur , Switzerland, as a machine designer. In 1878 he switched to the machine factory Friedrich von Martinis in Frauenfeld , where he worked for twenty years. When the German Association for the Promotion of Airship Travel was founded in Berlin in 1881 with the aim of “making the possibility of manufacturing dirigible airships known and promoting the procurement of the funds necessary for their construction” , Haenlein joined him in the same year at. However, his hope of being able to raise funds to continue his work through the association was not fulfilled. When he returned to Mainz in 1904, he summarized his ideas for airship construction in the brochure About the current stage of the dirigible airship .

Haenlein died in 1905 at the age of 69 in the former St. Vincenz Hospital in Mainz . His grave is in the main cemetery in Mainz .

power

It is Haenlein's merit to be the first to recognize the potential of the internal combustion engine for airship travel. He himself said in 1882:

"The construction of a flying machine is often sought through a combination of wheels, levers, eccentrics and so on, while in reality it can only be sought in an infinitely light and reliable motor."

His idea of using parts of the lifting gas as fuel for the engine was taken up again 60 years later, at least on a trial basis. B. LZ 129 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Paul Haenlein: The dirigible airship in case of war. In: Journal of the Association for the Promotion of Airship Travel. 4, 1885, pp. 174-177.
  • Paul Haenlein: About the current stage of the dirigible airship . Grethlein, Leipzig 1904.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Patents for inventions. Abridgments of Specifications Relating to Aeronautics. AD 1815-1866 . London 1869, p. 44.
  2. ↑ Peter Supf : The conquest of the air kingdom . Book guild Gutenberg , Frankfurt am Main 1957, p. 109f.
  3. ^ Reinhard Keimel : Aircraft construction in Austria. Aviatic Verlag, Oberhaching 2003, ISBN 3-925505-78-4 , p. 11.
  4. ^ Hermann Stade: 40 years of the Berlin aviation association. Berlin 1921, p. 7.
  5. ↑ Peter Supf: The conquest of the air kingdom . Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1957, p. 163.

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Haenlein, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aviation pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1905
Place of death Mainz