Rudolf Eickemeyer (inventor)
Rudolf Eickemeyer (born October 31, 1831 in Altenbamberg , Bad Kreuznach district, † January 23, 1895 in Washington, DC ) was a German-American inventor and entrepreneur.
The son of the forester Christiaan Eickemeyer and Katherine, geb. Brehm, attended secondary school in Kaiserslautern and studied at the polytechnic school in Darmstadt.
With his friend Georg Osterheld he joined the March Revolution of 1848. After their failure, they emigrated to the USA together and arrived in New York on November 20, 1850. He first worked at the Erie Railway and the Buffalo Steam Engine Works .
In September 1853 he founded a small machine shop with Osterheld in Yonkers (New York).
In 1856 he married Mary True Tarbell from Dover-Foxcroft (Maine) , with whom he had six children, including the later photographer Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr. (1862-1932).
With various inventions and new machines, the workshop gradually grew into a small factory. His inventions revolutionized hat manufacturing and Yonkers became America's largest hat manufacturer. He produced revolvers during the Civil War. In 1870 he invented a differential gear for combine harvesters, which he sold to a Canadian manufacturer for a lot of money.
In the 1870s he began developing electrically operated machines and also experimented with telephony. In 1876 he moved to Seven Oaks on Linden Street. In the mid-1880s, Eickemeyer & Osterheld Manufacturing Company was a large electrical engineering factory. In 1887 he and Stephen Dudley Field designed the first electric locomotive for the New York tram.
In June 1889 he hired the newly arrived immigrant Charles P. Steinmetz and provided him with his own research laboratory, where he developed his magnetic hysteresis laws in 1891. Then was Edwin W. Rice of the Thomson-Houston Electric Company attention and prompted 1,892 to get the assumption of Eicke Meyers company to Steinmetz. In 1893 the Eickemeyer & Osterheld Manufacturing Company merged with the General Electric Company (GE) founded in 1892 .
Eickemeyer continued his research and had around 150 patents. At Yonkers, he was director of the water committee, vice chairman of the Board of Education, volunteer firefighter, and president of the First National Bank. He passed away on a business trip.
Individual evidence
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Eickemeyer, Rudolf |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American inventor and entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 31, 1831 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Altenbamberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 23, 1895 |
| Place of death | Washington, DC |