(Vienna Centre) (UN)

(Vienna Centre) (UN) CSDHA (Centre pour le développement social et les affaires humanitaires) [Nations Unies, Vienne]

(Vienna Centre) (UN) CSDHA (Centre pour le développement social et les affaires humanitaires) [Nations Unies, Vienne]

SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing, Photography, film and optics

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Klic, sometimes known by the germanized form of his name Karl Klietsch, gained a knowledge of chemistry from his chemist father. However, he inclined towards the arts, preferring to mix paints rather than chemicals, and he trained in art at the Academy of Painting in Prague. His father thought to combine the chemical with the artistic by setting up his son in a photographic studio in Brno, but the arts won and in 1867 Klic moved to Vienna to practise as an illustrator and caricaturist. He also acquired skill as an etcher, and this led him to print works of art reproduced by photography by means of an intaglio process. He perfected the process c.1878 and, through it, Vienna became for a while the world centre for high-quality art reproductions. The prints were made by hand from flat plates, but Klic then proposed that the images should be etched onto power-driven cylinders. He found little support for rotary gravure, or rotogravure, on the European continent, but learning that Storey Brothers, textile printers of Lancaster, England, were working in a similar direction, he went there in 1890 to perfect his idea. Rotogravure printing on textiles began in 1893. They then turned to printing art reproductions on paper by rotogravure and in 1895 formed the Rembrandt Intaglio Printing Company. Their photogra-vures attracted worldwide attention when they appeared in the Magazine of Art. Klic saw photogravure as a small-scale medium for the art lover and not for mass-circulation publications, so he did not patent his invention and thought to control it by secrecy. That had the usual result, however, and knowledge of the process leaked out from Storey's, spreading to other countries in Europe and, from 1903, to the USA. Klic lived on in a modest way in Vienna, his later years troubled by failing sight. He hardly earned the credit for the invention, let alone the fortune reaped by others who used, and still use, photogravure for printing long runs of copy such as newspaper colour supplements.

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SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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Having studied law at the University of Erlangen, he became Confidential Secretary to the Prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, in whose territory his father had been in charge of a saltworks. When this small country fell to Württemberg in 1806, Glenck continued his mineralogical and geological studies in order to develop methods of finding deposits of salt. He was the first to carry out systematic large-scale salt explorations in Germany, mostly in southern and central parts, and achieved remarkable results that far exceeded former non-systematic findings. He worked either on behalf of governments or companies or at his own risk, and in the early 1820s he settled in Gotha to live in the centre of the regions of greatest interest to him.

His career began in 1819 with the discovery of the deposits of Ludwigshall near Wimpfen, Neckar, and prospecting salt near Basel in 1836 was his greatest success: Schweizerhall, opened one year later, made Switzerland self-sufficient in salt production. For fifteen years he had invested large sums into this project, which became the fifth salt-works to come into existence due to his drilling. Glenck worked with stir rods and he developed several new technical devices, such as casing the bore holes with iron pipes instead of wood (1830), and using wooden instead of iron rods to reduce the weight (1834). A flexible connection between rod and drill was to be introduced later by Karl von Oeynhausen. One of Glenck's most important followers in the field of deep-drilling was K.G. Kind.

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SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace

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The son of a physician, Oberth originally studied medicine in Munich, but his education was interrupted by the First World War and service in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Wounded, he passed the time by studying astronautics. He apparently simulated weightlessness and worked out the design for a long-range liquid-propelled rocket, but his ideas were rejected by the War Office; after the war he submitted them as a dissertation for a PhD at Heidelberg University, but this was also rejected. Consequently, in 1923, whilst still an unknown mathematics teacher, he published his ideas at his own expense in the book The Rocket into Interplanetary Space. These included a description of how rockets could achieve a sufficient velocity to escape the gravitational field of the earth. As a result he gained international prestige almost overnight and learned of the work of Robert Goddard and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. After correspondence with the Goddard and Tsiolkovsky, Oberth published a further work in 1929, The Road to Space Travel, in which he acknowledged the priority of Goddard's and Tsiolkovski's calculations relating to space travel; he went on to anticipate by more than thirty years the development of electric and ionic propulsion and to propose the use of giant mirrors to control the weather. For this he was awarded the annual Hirsch Prize of 10,000 francs. From 1925 to 1938 he taught at a college in Mediasch, Transylvania, where he carried out experiments with petroleum and liquid-air rockets. He then obtained a lecturing post at Vienna Technical University, moving two years later to Dresden University and becoming a German citizen. In 1941 he became assistant to the German rocket engineer Werner von Braun at the rocket development centre at Peenemünde, and in 1943 he began work on solid propellants. After the Second World War he spent a year in Switzerland as a consultant, then in 1950 he moved to Italy to develop solid-propellant anti-aircraft rockets for the Italian Navy. Five years later he moved to the USA to carry out advanced rocket research for the US Army at Huntsville, Alabama, and in 1958 he retired to Feucht, near Nuremberg, Germany, where he wrote his autobiography.

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KF / IMcN

SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Paper and printing

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The little that is known of Theophilus is what can be inferred from his great work, De diversis artibus. He was a Benedictine monk and priest living in north-west Germany, probably near an important art centre. He was an educated man, conversant with scholastic philosophy and at the same time a skilled, practising craftsman. Even his identity is obscure: Theophilus is a pseudonym, possibly for Roger of Helmarshausen, for the little that is known of both is in agreement.

Evidence in De diversis suggests that it was probably composed during 1110 to 1140. White (see Further Reading) goes on to suggest late 1122 or early 1123, on the grounds that Theophilus only learned of St Bernard of Clairvaulx's diatribe against lavish church ornamentation during the writing of the work, for it is only in the preface to Book 3 that Theophilus seeks to justify his craft. St Bernard's Apologia can be dated late 1122. No other medieval work on art combines the comprehensive range, orderly presentation and attention to detail as does De diversis. It has been described as an encyclopedia of medieval skills and crafts. It also offers the best and often the only description of medieval technology, including the first direct reference to papermaking in the West, the earliest medieval account of bell-founding and the most complete account of organ building. Many metallurgical techniques are described in detail, such as the making of a crucible furnace and bloomery hearth.

The treatise is divided into three books, the first on the materials and art of painting, the second on glassmaking, including stained glass, glass vessels and the blown-cylinder method for flat glass, and the final and longest book on metalwork, including working in iron, copper, gold and silver for church use, such as chalices and censers. The main texts are no mere compilations, but reveal the firsthand knowledge that can only be gained by a skilled craftsman. The prefaces to each book present perhaps the only medieval expression of an artist's ideals and how he sees his art in relation to the general scheme of things. For Theophilus, his art is a gift from God and every skill an act of praise and piety. Theophilus is thus an indispensable source for medieval crafts and technology, but there are indications that the work was also well known at the time of its composition and afterwards.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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After completing his early education in Weimar, Zeiss became an apprentice to the engineer Dr Frederick Koerner. As part of his training, Zeiss was required to travel widely and he visited Vienna, Berlin, Stuttgart and Darmstadt to study his trade. In 1846 he set up a business of his own, an optical workshop in Jena, where he began manufacturing magnifying glasses and microscopes. Much of his work was naturally for the university there and he had the co-operation of some of the University staff in the development of precision instruments. By 1858 he was seeking to make more expensive compound microscopes, but he found the current techniques primitive and laborious. He decided that it was necessary to introduce scientific method to the design of the optics, and in 1866 he sought the advice of a professor of physics at the University of Jena, Ernst Abbe (1840–1905). It took Zeiss until 1869 to persuade Abbe to join his company, and two difficult years were spent working on the calculations before success was achieved. Within a few more years the Zeiss microscope had earned a worldwide reputation for quality. Abbe became a full partner in the Zeiss business in 1875. In 1880 Abbe began an association with Friedrich Otte Schott that was to lead to the establishment of the famous Jena glass works in 1884. With the support of the German government, Jena was to become the centre of world production of new optical glasses for photographic objectives.

In 1886 the distinguished mathematician and optician Paul Rudolph joined Zeiss at Jena. After Zeiss's death, Rudolph went on to use the characteristics of the new glass to calculate the first anastigmatic lenses. Immediately successful and widely imitated, the anastigmats were also the first of a long series of Zeiss photographic objectives that were to be at the forefront of lens design for years to come. Abbe took over the management of the company and developed it into an internationally famous organization.

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JW / RTS