Ægidius Elling

Jens William Ægidius Elling ( born July 26, 1861 in Christiania, † May 27, 1949 in Oslo - spelling of Rufnamens also Aegid ( i) us) was a Norwegian engineer and inventor. He is known primarily as a developer of an early working prototype of a gas turbine.

Life and work

Aegidius Elling was in 1861 in Oslo (then Christiania called ) was born. His brother Catharinus later became known as a musician.

Aegidius visited in 1876 the Technical School in Christiania, and graduated in 1881 as a mechanical engineer from. Already at this school Elling had dealt with the concept of a gas turbine, and 1884, only three years after graduation, he reported a first draft for a patent. Between 1885 and 1902 he worked in various machine shops in Sweden and Norway as a developer and builder of steam engines. But in this time, he pushed his ideas for a gas turbine and undertook this study trips in the leading industrialized countries.

The biggest obstacle for the gas turbine construction at this time was the low efficiency of the compressor. Allows other developers had to fight, who worked around the turn of the century, regardless of Elling it: Auguste Rateau, René Armengoud and Charles Lemâle in France, Franz Stolze and Hans Holzwarth in Germany. Elling finally succeeded in 1903 to develop a centrifugal compressor with a considerable efficiency from about 85 to 87%. This consumed the compressor less energy than the turbine and gave the machine was in total for the first time in the position to give surplus labor. The multi-stage compressor had a radial blading, adjustable guide vanes, a plurality of intermediate injections for cooling, running at a speed 17000-20000 rpm and had a yield of about 11 hp (8 kW). The machine is now at the Norwegian Museum of Technology (Norsk Teknisk Museum ) issued in Oslo.

In the following years Elling improved its construction further and increased the number of stages and performance of the machine, ultimately (1925 ) up to 75 hp. Elling founded to implement its patents into marketable products also two private companies (AS and AS Elling Compressor rotation). Since Elling but apparently as an entrepreneur, especially in advertising and marketing, was not as skilled as on technical issues, found its development nationally and internationally little attention and brought no economic return. Elling therefore continued to work parallel to its independent development activities as an employee for other companies. Disappointed by the poor response in the Norwegian industry and by the fact that other developers such as Adolf Meyer International took the lead, Elling finally gave the gas turbine development in the 1930s and turned to other heat engineering machinery, equipment and procedures, in particular in the Norwegian fishing and pulp industry and the salt from seawater were used.

In 1937 Elling of the Norwegian Polytechnic Society silver medal for his services to the turbomachinery. He died in 1949 in Oslo.