Wilhelm Schmidt (engineer)

Wilhelm Schmidt, called steam -Schmidt ( born February 18, 1858 in Wegeleben, † February 16, 1924 in Bethel near Bielefeld ) was a German engineer and inventor. He brought the development of superheated steam for the steam engine technology breakthrough.

In school had Wilhelm Schmidt difficulties with reading, writing and arithmetic. So he could life not recite the alphabet without faltering. Verses and sayings he could not remember. He developed a passion for drawing and for machines.

Wilhelm Schmidt began his career as a machinist. He studied at the Technical University in Dresden under the direction of Gustav Zeuner.

Around 1880 he learned and worked at the company Richard Hartmann in Chemnitz, which was the largest Saxon companies.

In 1883 he settled as a civil engineer in Kassel, where he developed the hot steam technology for practical application. In 1908 he moved home and headquarters to Benneckenstein ( resin). He was not the first, who worked with superheated steam, but his predecessor used steam temperatures of 250 ° C; Schmidt just took the plunge to 350 ° C. For further experiments with the superheated steam was on the railway line Ilsenburg - Wernigerode, Wernigerode, close to the train station, a research institute. Here Schmidt founded Schmidt hot steam society.

By the superheated steam, the thermal efficiency of a steam engine is increased by up to about 50 percent. This technique had a decisive influence on the development of the steam locomotive and the steamship, but also to all other drives in which steam engines were used.

Many inventions Detail of Wilhelm Schmidt, such as the Schmidt superheater ( 1890 ) or the piston valve, which he developed with Robert Garbe of the Prussian State Railway, brought the technique of hot steam machine to perfection.

Even today (2012 ) there is the successor company of Schmidt's Superheated steam GmbH, which operates under the name ALSTOM Power Energy Recovery GmbH in Kassel- Bettenhausen. There now apparatuses are designed and built for process heat transfer for the petrochemical, chemical and metallurgical industry, eg Cracked gas coolers for the Äthylenherstellung, process gas cooler for the production of methanol, ammonia and hydrogen, and a plurality of devices for special applications. The company continues to be highly innovative and in its field worldwide market leader.

His inventions Schmidt saw the face of the " threat of being lost in the world" but rather as inferior. The very religious -minded Schmidt distributed from Bethel from " exhortations to the people." Bonding compounds passed to Frederick of Bodelschwinghstraße. He represented include the opinion that the Anglo-Saxon Christianity, the German had " softened".

Remembrance

February 16 in the Protestant calendar name.