Robert Victor Neher

Robert Viktor Neher (born February 2, 1886 in Schaffhausen ; † November 21, 1918 there ) was a Swiss industrialist and pioneer in aluminum technology.

origin

Robert Viktor Neher was the son of the Schaffhausen factory owner and Colonel Georg Robert Neher (1838–1925), who was the director of the Swiss Waggons Factory , and at times also the Gonzen iron mine . As a representative of JG Neher Sons & Cie. Georg Robert Neher was also instrumental in the establishment of the first European aluminum plant in Neuhausen and the establishment of Aluminum Industrie AG. Neuhausen (AIAG) involved. Johann Georg Neher was the progenitor of the Neher family, which produced numerous entrepreneurial personalities .

Product developments

Aluminum foil for gas balloons

Robert Viktor Neher studied law and economics at the universities of Geneva , Zurich and Berlin from 1906 to 1910 and became a pioneer in aluminum foil production via a detour . In 1909 the Gordon Bennet balloon competition took place in Zurich , and Neher was also present. A group of students agreed that success in such competitions essentially depends on the balloons losing as little gas as possible. Neher, who was about to take his doctorate at the time, had the idea of ​​covering the silk balloon envelope with a thin aluminum foil and thus making it airtight. He obtained aluminum foil from Heinrich Alfred Gautschi , who produced it according to a process that had been invented shortly before, and covered the balloon silk with it. These attempts with foil sheets failed, but Neher continued to pursue the idea because he was convinced that he could achieve his goal with endless strips of aluminum foil.

He sent in the spring of 1910 his two confidants, Erwin Lauber from Strasbourg, who was at that time teacher at a private institute in Zurich and Alfred Gmür, at that time a student at the Polytechnic Zurich to Dusseldorf to there in the rolling machine factory August Schmitz to order a machine which was constructed according to his designs. After initial attempts, Neher rented a small factory building in Emmishofen , where he installed a total of four rolling mills and with which he tried to manufacture aluminum strips over the next few months.

After a few failures, he, together with Edwin Lauber and Alfred Gmür, first filed a patent application in Switzerland on October 27, 1910 and, on the basis of this, another in Great Britain on September 15, 1911, for which a patent for the manufacture of Aluminum foil tapes was granted. It is true that these were not suitable for gluing the silk balloon envelopes, since endless tapes were more efficient to manufacture than films, which Heinrich Alfred Gautschi made using the paper or book rolling process , penetrated the market for packaging film.

Aluminum foil for packaging

With his process, packaging films of various thicknesses for foods such as chocolate, box cheese, tobacco products and welded packs could be produced much more efficiently. In 1910 Neher, Lauber and Gmür founded the limited partnership Dr. Lauber, Neher & Cie. in Emmishofen, which was converted into an AG in 1912 and was called Aluminum Walzerei Emmishofen AG from 1915 , and Robert Victor Neher AG from 1918 .

In addition to several chocolate factories , one of the major buyers of his foils was the Maggi company , which used them to package their ready-made soups and stock cubes. In order to serve the German market, founded Neher and his co-partner in 1912 in Singen , the site of the German branch of Maggi, the Dr. Lauber, Neher & Co. GmbH , from which the Aluminum-Walzwerke Singen GmbH emerged .

In the same year, Neher expanded in Germany by merging the Singener Werke with Aluminum GmbH in Teningen , headed by Emil Tscheulin . He merged the operations in Switzerland and Germany to form the holding company Aluminum-Walzwerke AG (AWAG) based in Schaffhausen, the headquarters of the Neher family.

Aluminum instead of tin

Until then, the buyers of his aluminum foils had packed their products with tin foil. They saw several advantages in the new material. The aluminum foil was easier and cheaper to produce, but above all aluminum had the advantage that, unlike tin, this metal was not traded on the stock exchange and so the price did not fluctuate constantly and thus made a reasonable cost calculation difficult.

Initially, the switch from tin to aluminum foil caused great difficulties because the food manufacturers wanted to continue using their wrapping machines, but the properties of the two metals are very different. Neher therefore hired a specialist for packaging machines, whom he sent to his customers in order to carry out the necessary modifications to their machines at his own expense. At the same time, he used all his energy to develop new packaging systems and worked to ensure that the manufacturers of packaging machines changed their products to use aluminum foil and the optimized packaging systems.

Advanced application

After the aluminum foils could be delivered on rolls with a tape length of 6,000 to 9,000 m and the suitable packaging machines were available, interest in the foils grew not only among chocolate and soup manufacturers. Tea, chicory , biscuits, cheese, butter, margarine, soap and ice cream are just a few of the products that were wrapped in aluminum foil from then on. The aluminum foil was of great importance as a prerequisite for the future market of wound capacitors in the emerging market of communications technology.

In 1915, Neher began dyeing, embossing and printing aluminum foil in Emmishofen. This refinement had existed for several decades, first of tin foil, then also of aluminum foil sheets, which had been manufactured using the Gautschi process. Neher's merit is the construction of special machines with the help of which the endless rolls produced by him could be refined.

Neher has not seen the further development of his technology in his company, such as the lamination of aluminum foil on paper, cardboard or fabrics. He was drafted into the Swiss Army as cavalry captain and commander of Dragoon Squadrons 19 in early 1918 and fell victim to the Spanish flu in November of the same year .

literature

• Erich Trösch: Neher, Robert Viktor. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Aluminum-Walzwerke Singen [Hrsg.]: 25 years of Aluminum-Walzwerke Singen: AWS; 1912 - 1937. Singing 1937.
• Leo Weisz : Studies on the commercial and industrial history of Switzerland. Second volume. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1940.
• Robert Victor Neher AG [Ed.]: Since 1910 Neher aluminum foils. Kreuzlingen 1960.
• Aluminum-Walzwerke Singen [Hrsg.]: 50 years of Singen Aluminum. 1962.
• Rudolf, A. Grüninger: 75 years of Robert Viktor Neher AG, aluminum rolling mill. In: Schaffhauser Nachrichten , October 5, 1985.
• Rolf Wanning: ALUSINGEN = Alu + Singen: for the company's 70th anniversary. In: Singener Jahrbuch 1982. Markorplan Agency & Verl. Bonn 1984, ISSN  0933-1107 , pp. 118–125.
• Paul Ferdinand Portmann: Robert Victor Neher AG, aluminum rolling and refining works. In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch, 60. Huber Frauenfeld 1985, ISSN  1420-3634 , pp. 94-104.
• Klara Fuchs: 75 years of ALUSINGEN. Singen aluminum rolling mills, Singen 1987.
• Michael Bürgi, Monica Rüthers , Astrid Wüthrich [Eds.]: Kreuzlingen - Children, Consumption and Careers, 1874–2000. Wolfau-Druck Rudolf Mühlemann, Weinfelden 2001, ISBN 3-85809-124-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leo Weisz 1940: 161
2. ^ [1] British patent GB 20455 Improvements in the Manufacture of Aluminum Foil

Web links

• Company history - Amcor Flexibles Singen; with portrait of Neher