Robert Whitehead (engineer)

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Robert Whitehead

Robert Whitehead (born January 3, 1823 in Bolton , England , † November 14, 1905 in Fiume ) was a British engineer and designer who, together with Giovanni Luppis, developed the first torpedoes with their own propulsion and self-control. With that he created a weapon that had a decisive influence on both world wars ( submarine war ).

Life

Whitehead attended Manchester's Mechanics Institute , then worked in a shipyard in Toulon, France . He then moved to Milan to design textile machines, and in 1848 to Trieste to work as a designer at Österreichischer Lloyd . In 1856 he became the manager of the metal foundry Fonderia Metalli in Fiume . He changed the company name to Stabilimento Tecnico Fiumano and began manufacturing steam boilers and machines for ships. The company carried out work for the Austro-Hungarian Navy . Whitehead founded other companies for the production of steam engines and locomotives in other European countries and became a successful businessman.

Robert Whitehead with a damaged test torpedo

In 1864 Whitehead signed a contract with engineer Giovanni Luppis to further develop his first prototype of a self-propelled torpedo, invented in 1860. Luppis had previously worked in the Austrian Navy and was now trying to implement his idea of ​​a new weapon. Whitehead developed the torpedo for the Austrian Navy and demonstrated it for the first time in Fiume in 1866. This torpedo, called the mine ship , was 35.5 cm wide and 3.35 m long, weighed 136 kg, carried a 9 kg explosive charge , had a range of 300 to 400 meters and reached a speed of 6 knots . The energy source for the drive was air compressed to 40 bar (40 kp / cm²), which was carried along in a pressure vessel. The naval commission finally accepted the model and commissioned the engineers to start test production.

Whitehead's grave in Worth, West Sussex

In 1875 he founded the Whitehead shipyard in Fiume, then a royal free city in the Hungarian half of the empire, now Rijeka in Croatia. In 1890 Whitehead increased the speed of its torpedoes to 30 knots. In 1891 he opened a factory near Portland Harbor because the British Navy wanted to order his torpedoes in large numbers but insisted that they be made in the UK. In 1895 he improved self-control by installing a gyro instrument (gyroscope), a development of the Austrian Ludwig Obry .

Robert Whitehead died in Fiume on November 14, 1905. By then he had received numerous awards for his inventions and achievements in several countries, but not in his home country England.

family

Whitehead married Frances Maria Johnstone in 1846. They had two daughters, Alice and Frances Eleanor, and two sons, John and James. His daughter Frances Eleanor married Louis Hassenpflug, the son of Ludwig Hassenpflug and Charlotte Grimm . His daughter Alice married Georg Anton Maria Graf von Hoyos (1842-1904; Freiherr zu Stichsenstein ) in 1869 , who later bought the Whitehead shipyard and renamed it Silurifico Whitehead . The daughter from Alice's marriage with the Count, Marguerite Malvine von Hoyos, married the son of the German Chancellor, Herbert Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen , in 1892 .

John Whitehead, Robert's eldest son, born in Trieste in 1854, who helped his father develop the torpedo, was hired as director of the Whitehead shipyard. John worked with Ernst Mach among others in the 1880s . A daughter of John Whitehead, Agathe (1891–1922), married the submarine captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp , who later became famous as the father of the Trapp family .

Museum reception

In Vienna Museum of Military History is in the Marine Hall an original Whitehead torpedo issued.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Army History Museum / Military History Institute (ed.): The Army History Museum in the Vienna Arsenal . Verlag Militaria , Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902551-69-6 , p. 164
personal data
SURNAME Whitehead, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English engineer
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Bolton (Greater Manchester) , England
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1905
Place of death Fiume