William Fardely

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Memorial plaque on Fardely's house in Mannheim

William Fardely (born February 16, 1810 in Ripon , York County , Great Britain , † June 26, 1869 in Mannheim ) was one of the pioneers of electrical telegraphy .

Fardely's father, a British citizen, had settled in Mannheim in 1820 as a wealthy privateer. His mother was German and sister-in-law of Johann Adam von Itzstein . Little is known of William Fardely's studies and training; from 1840 to 1842 he stayed in England and gained experience in London with the pointer telegraph used by William Fothergill Cooke (1806–1879) and Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875) in the railway service . Back in Mannheim he referred to himself as a "telegraph engineer". In 1843 the first electric telegraph in Germany in the form of a needle telegraph to Cooke and Wheatstone on the Aachen - Ronheide railway line was used.

In 1844 he published a treatise on the "electromagnetic typotelegraph" he had developed. Based on the English model, Fardely constructed a simplified pointer telegraph that was introduced in 1844 on the 8.8 km long line along the Taunus Railway between Wiesbaden and Kastel . This was the second telegraph line in Germany.

For the first time ever, Fardely used the conductivity of the earth as a return line in his telegraph . As a result, he got by with just a single wire line, which reduced the cost of building from 1,800 guilders to 80 guilders per kilometer. The overhead line consisted of a copper wire with a diameter of 1.5 mm attached to wooden poles. Large copper plates had been sunk into the ground at both ends of the line in order to increase the conductivity. A little later the line was extended from Kastel to Frankfurt .

Fardely was also able to supply the telegraph equipment for his lines inexpensively, which he had - for the conditions at the time - built in large numbers by Black Forest watchmakers. Fardely's pointer telegraph was introduced to the Saxon-Silesian and Saxon-Bavarian railways in 1846/47. In 1851, under Fardely's direction, the telegraph line was built along the Palatine Ludwig Railway between Neunkirchen and Ludwigshafen and equipped with its pointer telegraph. Fardely also took part in the development of relay transmission and in the improvement of galvanic elements , but the engineer, who also worked as a pyrotechnician , probably also as a painter and musician, was ultimately denied any broad impact. He died on June 26, 1869 in the Mannheim General Hospital and was buried in the Mannheim main cemetery.

literature

Web links

Commons : William Fardely  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ William Fardelys Grab , in: Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter . 4 (1903), No. 1
personal data
SURNAME Fardely, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English engineer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1810
PLACE OF BIRTH Ripon
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 1869
Place of death Mannheim