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The Leaders of the German Steam-Engine Industry During the First Hundred Years1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Fritz Redlich
Fritz Redlich
Affiliation:
Belmont, Massachusetts
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Extract

The introduction of steam engines in Germany was the work of Prussian state administrators, a body of men who were technically trained, educated in Mercantilist traditions, and guided by the principles of Mercantilist policy. That fact was typical of the German political and economic setup in the late eighteenth century; Prussian administrators also introduced the modern iron industry into Germany. By contrast. English industrial leadership in the same years was already in the hands of co-operating inventors and entrepreneurs, as evidenced by the classical partnership of Watt and Boulton, the prototype of many to come in capitalistic industry.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , November 1944 , pp. 121 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1944

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References

2 The early history of the steam-engine industry cannot be understood without some knowledge of the early history of the steam engine. Thomas Savary, in 1698, was the first to construct a machine that made use of steam power for practical purposes. His engine was improved, in 1705, by Thomas Newcomen; and both designs, today called atmospheric engines, found application in mining during the following decades. When James Watt started on his epoch-making career he began by improving the atmospheric engine. Only later did he develop a new machine (patented in 1782), the “double acting” steam engine as opposed to the atmospheric engine.

3 Bückling was Bergassessor, later Oberbergrat and Bauinspector.

4 Ford, Guy Stanton, “The Lost Year in Stein's Life,” On and Off the Campus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938)Google Scholar; Schweman, A., “Friedrich Anton Frh. v. Heinitz,” Matschoss' Beiträge, XII (1922), 157 ff.Google Scholar, especially 166, 167.

5 There seems to have been at that time an imported English atmospheric engine in the royal copper mines near this Rothenburg, which is in what is now the Regierungsbezirk Merseburg in the Province of Saxony. If so, Bückling must have studied this machine also.

6 Schwemann, A., “Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Reden,” Matschoss' Beiträge, XIV (1924), 22 ff.Google Scholar; von Carnall, R., “Das Denkmal des Ministers Grafen von Reden bei Königshütte,” Zeitschrift für das Berg-, Hülten- und Salinenwesen im Preussischen Staate, I (1854), 201 ff.Google Scholar See also pp. 36 ff. of my History of American Business Leaders (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, 1940)Google Scholar.

7 Koch, Hugo, Denkschrift zur Feier des Hundertjährigen Bestehens des Kgl. Blei- und Silbererzbergwerkes Friedrichsgrube bei Tarnowitz (Berlin, 1884), pp. 37 ff.Google Scholar; von Carnall, R., “Die erste Dampfmaschine in Schlesien,” Zeitschrift des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure, V (1861), 27 ff.Google Scholar; Gentzen, , Denkschrift zur Feier des Hundertfünfzigjährigen Bestehens der Königlichen Hütte zu Malapanc (Berlin, 1904)Google Scholar. The following details may be of interest to the business historian. The offer for the engine was dated January 20, 1786. The order was given on February 20 of the same year. The engine was shipped from Cardiff in May 1787. It went by ship to Swinemünde on the Baltic Sea, was shipped thence on the River Oder to Breslau, where it was transshipped by wagon to Upper Silesia; there it arrived late in August.

8 Down to 1804 engines were occasionally built at the Friedrichsgrube for use at that mine.

9 The following is based on the exceedingly interesting letters and documents published by Guy Stanton Ford in On and Off the Campus, pp. 161 ff.

10 Ibid., p. 163. Italics mine.

11 Boulton had in mind the various clandestinely made drawings. Bückling had made one of the improved atmospheric engines. A protégé of Stein, August Friedrich Alexander von Eversman, had in 1784 made another set on a trip to England, and Stein had in his possession one made by Friedrich as mentioned above. Undoubtedly there were many more all over the Continent.

12 Franz Dinnendahl, ein Lebensbild (Beiträge zur Geschichte von Stadt und Stift Essen, No. 26); Matschoss, Conrad, “Franz Dinnendahl. Ein Hundertjähriges Dampfmaschinenjubiläum,” Zeitschrift des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure, XLVII (1903), 585 ff.Google Scholar

13 Lotz, Heinrich, “John Cockerill,” Matschoss' Beiträge, X (1920)Google Scholar; my History of American Business Leaders, p. 43.

14 Several steam-engine factories stemmed from Dinnendahl's pioneer enterprise. The iron foundry in Mühlheim an der Ruhr, which he had started in co-operation with his brother Johann, subsequently became the Friedrich Wilhelm Hütte, an important enterprise. There Johann Dinnendahl began building steam engines in the 1820's. By 1825 he had already built twenty of them, and this plant was later one of the most important centers for the production of engines for mines and forges.

One of Franz Dinnendahl's sons, Johann, introduced steam-engine production in the iron foundry, later called the Prinz Rudolf Hütte, of the Duke von Croy zu Dülmen and Johann became manager of that plant in 1840.

15 It is remarkable that some of the earliest steam-engine builders were also creative in the iron industry, namely, Graf Reden, Cockerill, Jacobi, and Harkort.

16 Greve, Wilhelm, Die Gutehoffnungshütte zu Oberhausen an der Ruhr (Beiträge zur Geschichte von Stadt und Stift Essen, No. 2, Essen, 1881)Google Scholar; Reichert, J., “Die Geschichte der Gutehoffnungshütte in Oberhausen (Rheinland),” Matschoss' Beiträge, II (1910)Google Scholar; Büchner, Fritz, Hundertfünfundzwanzig Jahre Geschichte der Gutehoffnungshütte, A. G. (privately printed, 1935)Google Scholar.

17 Berger, Louis, Der alie Harkort (5th ed.; Leipzig, 1926)Google Scholar; Matschoss, Conrad, “Friedrich Harkort, Der Grosse Deutsche Industriebegründer und Volkserzicher,” Matschoss' Beiträge. X (1920), i ff.Google Scholar; Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographieen (Münster, 1932); Matschoss, Conrad, Ein Jahrhundert Deutscher Maschinenbau von der Mechanischen Werkstätte zur Deutschen Maschinenfabrik, 1819–1919 (Berlin, 1919)Google Scholar.

18 Eulenburg, Franz, Phantasie und Wille des Wirtschaftenden Menschen (Tübingen, 1931)Google Scholar.

19 Thomas was an able man. He helped greatly in recruiting other English workmen who were indispensable to success. His main job was installing the products of the works. Some time later he left the concern after disagreements with Harkort and made a creditable record as an independent machine manufacturer in Germany.

20 In the 1820's the “Kunstmeister” Reuleaux in partnership with one Englerth and an English mechanic named Dobbs founded an engine works in Aachen which built engines from 2 to 100 h-p. for mining and for the local textile industry.

21 Since the German product was unsatisfactory, Harkort in the early 1820's bought boilers in England. The main difficulty of early boiler construction was that iron plates were not rolled, but hammered; and consequently numerous small plates had to be riveted together. Every rivet was liable to spring a leak, and often steam would escape at more than one spot at the same time. One of the first German boiler plants was founded in Weiden near Aachen in 1814 by the brothers Jean Pascal and Jaques Pascal Piedboeuf, two Belgians, under the name of their father, Jaques Piedboeuf. The latter had previously founded the first plant of that type in Belgium.

As mentioned above, Harkort pioneered in this field also and not only developed a successful plant, but established something like a school. Many engineers and entrepreneurs who were later leaders in this industry in the Ruhr area had worked with Harkort at one time or another.

The building of boilers became easier when larger plates could be rolled and given an adequate shape in the process of production. Consequently by 1850 numerous works combined engine and boiler production, as, for instance, those of Alban, Hartmann, Egestorff, Wöhlert. After 1860 the puddling and rolling mill of Schulz, Knaudt & Company in Essen, founded in 1855, was leading in the production of boiler plates.

22 Kamp was an outstanding man and entrepreneur. See Matschoss' Beiträge, X (1920), 3, 27, 28.Google Scholar

23 The builder was a Scotsman who was in the service of the Prussian state. John Baildon (1772–1846) was called by Graf Reden from the Barron Iron Works in Scotland to Upper Silesia in order to help in setting up coke blast furnaces.

24 The small Bavarian steam-engine industry in that period was without importance.

25 In addition to the enterprises mentioned in the next paragraph, the engineer Aston began an engine works in Magdeburg in the 1820's which later became the Gräflich Stolbergsche Maschinenfabrik.

26 This enterprise was very progressive; the second power engine ever set up in Prussia was installed here around 1810.

27 Metzeltin, E., “Die ersten Deutschen Lokomotivbauer,” Matschoss' Beiträge, XXIV (1935), 23 ff.Google Scholar The dates following the names indicate, in each case, the starting year of the combination.

28 In some cases, mostly in a later period, engine, locomotive, and steamship building were combined in one enterprise, for instance by Tischbein, Wöhlert, Maffei, Schichau, and the Vulkan.

29 Berlins Aufstieg zur Weltstadt (Berlin, 1929).

30 This enterprise later became the important Maschinenfabrik Buckau, A. G., which will be mentioned repeatedly. It was managed from 1838 through 1851 by Alfred Tischbein, a technical genius with limited business acumen, who nevertheless later became an independent entrepreneur founding a machine shop and shipyard, the Schiffswerft und Maschinenbauanstalt Neptun, in Rostock. His successor was Hermann Gruson, one of the great German industrialists and famous as the producer of armor plate. He in turn was succeeded in 1855 by Brami Andreae, who, as the guiding genius of the works, made of it one of the leading German machine factories.

31 Incidentally, the builder of this plant, the Prussian official, “Fabrikencommissarius,” I. G. Hofmann (1804–1879), founded in 1855 an engine works of his own in this part of the country.

32 See below, pp. 139–41.

33 Wappler, Bergamtsrat, “Oberberghauptmann von Trebra und die drei ersten sächsischen Kunstmeister,” Mitteilungen des Freiberger Altertumsvereins, No. 41 (1905), pp. 69 ff.Google Scholar

34 The second case was that of A. Knoevenagel, a former worker of Egells, who built an engine plant in Hanover in 1856.

35 Water-tube boilers are boilers in which the heating gases circulate around tubes through which the water passes.

36 It has been mentioned that the combination of engine and steamship building was achieved repeatedly at that time. Its development out of the repair shop of a shipping line took place also in Magdeburg-Buckau (see above, pp. 135–7), where the Rotterdam plant was probably copied.

37 About Lueg, see my History of American Business Leaders, pp. 47 and 58. His interest in engines dated from 1819 when he participated in building the first one of the Gutehoffnungshütte.

38 Before the crisis of 1848 terminated his job there, Andreae had been an engineer in the engine shop of the Hamburg-Magdeburg steamship company under Tischbein. Andreae was followed after a short time by A. Mestern, the leading spirit of the Wilhelmshütte in Eulau, near Sprottau, Silesia, which had started engine building in 1837.

39 The great Swiss entrepreneur Johann Jacob Sulzer-Hirzel gained considerable influence on the development of the German engine industry. Although he was not a German himself, there is much similarity between him and his contemporary German competitors. In some respects, however, he is unique, belonging as he does to the two main periods of capitalistic engine industry and being the only craftsman who gained particular importance in the second. In his person, as to a minor degree in that of the Berlin engine builder Louis Schwartz-kopff, both periods seem to overlap. The craftsman-entrepreneur Sulzer was the son of a craftsman. Like all the German craftsmen of his time he had “journeyed,” thereby gaining experience in various plants. He finished his technical education at the École des Arts et Métiers in Paris. Like the various craftsmen discussed above, Sulzer transplanted the engine industry into a new location, in his case, Switzerland, which previously possessed only a small engine production in Zurich, begun in 1839. Like Harkort, before embarking on the enterprise he went to England, studied the industry there, and with the help of a relative hired a first-rate English engineer, Charles Brown, who in 1851 set up Sulzer's engine production in Switzerland and later designed his epoch-making machines. Sulzer, as the only one of the leading craftsmen-entrepreneurs in this industry, left the technical end of the enterprise to his collaborators while he remained the entrepreneur, that is to say, the actual head and guiding spirit to whom was due the success of the venture.

Incidentally the Sulzers also pioneered in the application of superheated steam in engines. They were induced to do so through their acquaintance with the Alsatian textile manufacturer and scholar, Gustave-Adolphe Him (1815–1890), who experimented in this field. See Dr. Faudel et Emile Schwoerer, “Gustave-Adolphe Him, 1815–1890. Notice biographique avec documents divers concernant la vie, la famille et les travaux de Hirn, M.,” Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire Naturelle de Colmar, Nouvelle Série I, Années 1889 et 1890 (Colmar, 1891), pp. 200 ff.Google Scholar, 322 ff.

40 Matschoss, Conrad, Die Maschinenfabrik R. Wolf, Magdeburg-Buckau, 1862–1912 (Berlin, 1912)Google Scholar, passim; Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder (Magdeburg, 1926), Rudolf Wolf, passim.

41 The creation of new engine plants by seceding partners was rare, an example being the foundation of a factory in Chemnitz by Götze, a former partner of Hartmann, in 1845.

42 The latest of Berlin's important engine factories was founded in 1852 by Louis Schwartzkopff (1825–1892). Schwartzkopff, the son of a merchant, had studied at the Gewerbeinstitut in Berlin, gained practical experience in Borsig's plant, and traveled in England to study the industry there.

43 See footnote 14.