Reinhold Rücker Angerstein

Reinhold Rücker Angerstein, portrayed by Olof Arenius in 1755

Sketch from the Billingsfors ironworks

Overview drawing of the buildings of the Gustafsfors ironworks

Reinhold Rücker Angerstein (born October 25, 1718 in Vikmanshyttan , Hedemora municipality , † January 5, 1760 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish metallurgist , civil servant and entrepreneur .

Life

Angerstein came from an old Swedish family of iron industrialists with German roots: a German great-grandfather owned an ironworks and emigrated to Sweden in 1639. After his school education in Uppsala , which he completed in 1727 at the age of 18, he worked for the Swedish Mining and Metallurgy Inspectorate ( Bergskollegium ) until he was 24 . At the age of 31 he embarked on several long trips abroad between 1749 and 1777, which took him to Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Italy, France, Portugal, Belgium, Holland and Great Britain. From these trips, which were financed by Jernkontoret , the Swedish interest group for the iron industry, he sent detailed and illustrated reports home, in which he described above all his observations on technical and economic aspects of mining and iron production. On his trip to England and Wales between 1753 and 1755, he was suspected of industrial espionage. In Sheffield, where he had been interested in a new process developed by Benjamin Huntsman in the Aftercliffe industrial area , he was reportedly expelled from the city after a few hours.

After his return he received a post as assessor and director of the largest steelworks in the country ("Direktör övfer rikets gröfre svartsmide") with the mining college. Sketches of his inspection trips to Swedish steelworks have also been preserved.

In 1757 he bought the Vira steelworks in Uppland northeast of Stockholm, which produced weapons for the Swedish army. He developed far-reaching plans to expand the plant, which, however, he was no longer able to realize by the end of his life three years later.

literature

• Torsten and Peter Berg: RR Angerstein's Illustrated Travel Diary 1753-1755: industry in England and Wales from a Swedish perspective . The Science Museum, London 2001, ISBN 1-900747-24-3
• Göran Rydén, A. Florén: A Journey to the Market Society. A Swedish Pre-Industrial Spy in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century . In: R. Björk, K. Molin (Eds.): Societies made up of history . Rolf Torstendahl's Festskrift. Uppsala 1999
• Reinhold R. Angerstein: Reinhold R. Angerstein's resor genome Ungern och Österrike 1750 . Jernkontorets bergshistoriska utskott, Stockholm 1992
• Leos Müller: Consuls, Corsairs, and Commerce. The Swedish Consular Service and Long-distance Shipping, 1720-1815 . In: Forum Naval , No 10, 2004, ISBN 91-974015-8-7
• Reinhold Rücker Angerstein . In: Herman Hofberg, Frithiof Heurlin, Viktor Millqvist, Olof Rubenson (eds.): Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon . 2nd Edition. tape 1 : A-K . Albert Bonniers Verlag, Stockholm 1906, p. 38 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Swedish Visits to the Attercliffe Works ( Memento of the original from July 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.