Adolf Slaby

Adolf Karl Heinrich Slaby ( born April 18, 1849 in Berlin, † April 6, 1913 in Charlottenburg ) was a German electrical engineer.

Slaby was the first professor of electrical engineering at the Technical University of Charlottenburg ( 1886). Eleven years later he occupied himself, following Marconi, with questions of the radio transmission, introduced improvements and made it popular. Through his personal access to Kaiser Wilhelm II, he brought a lot for the social prestige of engineers and engineering. His son was the engineer and designer Rudolf Slaby, co-founder of the Slaby - Beringer automobile works in Berlin.

Adolf Slaby, son of a bookbinder, was already showing an interest in the mathematical and technical secondary school. He enrolled at the Berlin Trade Academy, the forerunner of TH Charlottenburg, to study mechanical engineering and mathematics, among others, Franz Reuleaux. In addition, he worked as a private tutor of the machine manufacturer Louis Schwartzkopff, resulting in a more intense contact with the practical engineering revealed. Lack doctoral programs at the technical universities Slaby graduated from his studies at the University of Jena, where he was a mathematical work of Dr. phil. doctorate.

First teaching

He then took up a teaching of Mathematics and Mechanics at the trade school in Potsdam, where he experimented with hot air and gas equipment. He wrote a theory of gas machine, which occupies an important place in the gasoline engine development.

Electrical Engineering

Berlin was then the center of electrical engineering, what Werner von Siemens and his company played a major role. This supported Slaby in person at private studies in this specialized field. So Slaby was at the Berlin Trade Academy in 1876 and then habilitation lecture on Electric engines, "Electrical telegraphy " and electromechanics. In 1883 he became the first full professor of electrical engineering at the now renamed in Charlottenburg Technical College, where his perfectly presented events also attracted much interest. Slaby found that the theoretical lectures should be necessarily associated with internships, which allowed him the generous support of the industry. In 1884 he founded with a colleague a Electrotechnical Laboratory, where he took over the area of Electrical Machinery and equipment eventually served as Professor predicate, while HW Vogel led the Department of Electrical lighting. For example, Berlin became the most important training center for the young electrical engineering.

Radio links

The personal acquaintance with the chief of the English Telegrafenverwaltung Sir William Henry Preece 1897 Slaby participated in Marconi experiments with some of the wireless telegraphy over the English Channel coast, aided by his assistant Georg Graf von Arco. He immediately recognized the significance of this invention, and he repeated the experiments in Berlin and immediately expanded and examined the physical and technical bases closer. This is followed by the emperor and the military authorities were very interested. The wireless Telegraphieversuche first found at the TH Berlin and then between the Saviour Church at Port of Sacrow and the 1.6 km distant naval base at New Garden Kongsnæs place in Potsdam. On October 7, 1897 achieved a radio link from Schöneberg to rank village, which already represented a world record of 21 km, and the following summer about 60 kilometers from Berlin to Jiiterbog. This resulted in significant improvements to success: the radio link was not in the transmitting antenna (as propagated Marconi), but in an inductively coupled to the antenna circuit loop.

Establishment of Telefunken

To radio communications they were sought elsewhere, always behind it was a large company where Slaby it was the AEG, at Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. and Ferdinand Braun Siemens & Halske. This meant that the radio message a Slaby from a Marconi station was rejected because the concession agreement the latter forbade it. This untenable situation called for agreements: 1903, AEG and Siemens & Halske company for wireless telegraph m. b. H. System Telefunken, also called Telefunken company. The line took over Slabys former assistant Georg Graf von Arco.

Commitment to the university

Once it became he both Chairman of the Association of German Engineers ( VDI) and 1893 first as a founding member Chairman of the Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE ), he received personal access to Kaiser Wilhelm II He gave lectures on art in Berlin's Schloss, but experimental lectures at the TH Berlin organized by him for the emperor. There he sat down for the social recognition of engineers and the complete equality of engineering colleges with universities on the initiative of Alois Riedler. The latter meant in particular the right to award doctorates for the Institutes of Technology, which she also received in 1899 then. From 1894 to 1895 he was rector of the Technical University of Berlin. Adolf Slaby was established in 1898 as the first representative of a TH lifetime member of the Prussian House of Lords.

Slaby was beyond March 1, 1906 to January 18, 1912 Chairman of the Academic Association HUT and member of the literary society club "Tunnel over the Spree ."

Retirement

From 1906 Slaby gave a special lecture on the spark telegraphy until he finally retired in 1912. He was succeeded by Ernst Orlich, a representative of classical mathematical treatment of the problems of theoretical electrical engineering.

Private life

Adolf Slaby was married to Julie Beringer. She was the daughter of the Berlin entrepreneur August Beringer.

Memoirs

A " Berlin Memorial Plaque " is located on the campus of the Technical University, Strasse des 17 Juni 135, Charlottenburg -Wilmersdorf, at the northeast corner of the low-rise building of the Institute of Architecture ( transport links U 2 to Ernst- Reuter -Platz).
To commemorate Slaby a stamp of the German Federal Post Office Berlin was issued ( Inception 125th birthday on April 14, 1974).
In two districts of Berlin ( Treptow- Köpenick and Marzahn - Heller village) and in Cologne streets are named after Adolf Slaby.
In Cologne, the metro lines 13 and 18 stop at the bus stop " Slabystraße ".

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