Carl Berg (airship builder)
Carl Berg (4 February 1851,
Berg came from a commercial iron-works family. His great-grandfather founded a button-making factory on 1786 in Lüdenscheid. In the following generations the factory developed into an important metal-working company. Among others it incorporated a brass works and an iron works in Eveking (today Werdohl).
After his father's death Carl Berg, at the age of 20, took over the firm and expanded it further. Early on he recognised the opportunities in the electrical industries and delivered special wire for the Post to use for telegraph and telephone. Other non-ferrous metals were developed.
Berg founded as subsidiaries the copperworks "Deutschland" in Berlin and "Österreich" in Außig (part of Cavertitz, in Bohemia). Above all he realised the advantages of aluminium as a light building material and his Lüdenscheid firm became a pioneer of the aluminium industry.
In 1892 Berg delivered material to the airship constructor David Schwarz for his first aluminium rigid dirigible in Russia, 1892 to 1894, and also for Schwarz's second aluminium airship in Berlin, 1895 to 1897. Berg's firm constructed the framework and separate parts. After Schwarz's death, Carl Berg worked with the Schwarz's widow to complete construction of the second airship up to its partially successful test flight.[1]
By the end of 1897
Berg continued to provide materials for Zeppelin's airships.
Aluminium alloys
For the Schwarz airship Berg used an alloy of unknown composition named Viktoria aluminium. For the
Death
After Berg's death in 1906, Zeppelin became the customer of Carl Berg AG (operated from 1906 until 1926).[4]
Notes
- ^ Dooley A.186-A.193
- ^ Dooley A.193-A.194
- ^ Dooley A.167
- ^ "record from Westfallian business archive". www.archive.nrw.de. Archived from the original on 2016-08-28. Retrieved 2008-06-12.
References
- Dooley, Sean C., The Development of Material-Adapted Structural Form - Part II: Appendices. Thèse No 2986 (2004), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Other reading
- Wilhelm Schulte: Westfälische Köpfe. Münster, 1977. S. 23 f. ISBN 3-402-05700-X– (German)
- Hans G. Knäusel: Unternehmen Zeppelin. Bonn, 1994. S. 21. ISBN 3-7812-1366-8
- Nikolaj Müller-Wusterwitz: Die Unternehmen der Familie Berg : Chronik ab 1787. Lüdenscheid, 1999. ISBN 3-921595-30-4
- Eckhard Trox (Hrsg.): Der Traum vom Fliegen : Carl Berg und die Luftschiffidee von Lüdenscheid bis Lakehurst. Lüdenscheid, 2000. ISBN 3-929614-43-X
- Eckhard Trox, Der unterschätzte Industrielle Carl Berg (1851–1906) : Aluminiumlegierungen, diffizile Geschäftsbeziehungen und Zeppeline, in: Der Märker. Landeskundliche Zeitschrift für den Bereich der ehemaligen Grafschaft Mark und den Märkischen Kreis, Altena 2001, S. 57–67. ISSN 0024-9661
External links
- Carl Berg in the German National Library catalogue
- Carl Berg im Deutschen Museum Munich
- record from Westphalian business archive Archived 2016-08-28 at the Wayback Machine