Wilhelm von Pressel

William Pressel ( born October 28, 1821 in Stuttgart, † May 16 1902 in Pera ) was a German railway engineer. In the Turkish service, he designed the Anatolian railway network and became the author of the Baghdad Railway.

Life

William Pressel, the son of a master baker learned at the trade school in Stuttgart the profession of stonemasonry. After two years of wandering through France and England, he returned to Stuttgart in 1841 and took over, without having to have special training, the representation of the diseased professor of descriptive geometry at the Polytechnic Stuttgart.

Influenced by the Württemberg Planning Director Carl von Etzel, located Pressel turned to the railroad and collected from 1844 to 1850 first experience in the construction of the railway line on the Geislingen. He then worked for the Swiss Central Railway from 1853 to 1858 and directed the construction of the Hauenstein tunnel near Basel. In 1862 he followed Etzel Austrian Southern Railway Company and in 1865 was appointed Planning Director of the Company. Pressel earned special merits for the completion of the Brenner railway from Innsbruck to Bolzano.

1869 took over Pressel the post of chief engineer at the Orient railway founded by Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Under the direction Pressel was born before 1872 in the European part of the Ottoman Empire, the railway connection of Dobrljin ( on the border with Austria - Hungary ) to Constantine Opel.

Pressel was appointed in 1872 by Sultan Abdulaziz to the Imperial General of the Ottoman railway. In the following years he designed a 6800 km long Anatolian railway network. The first 91 km long section of the Anatolian Railway of Constantinople Opel to Izmit, which established the Ottoman Empire as a state railway was built under his direction. The realization of its comprehensive plans could not prevail Pressel against the resistance of political and financial circles. The construction of the Baghdad Railway began only a year after his death.

Publications

  • The construction of the Hauenstein tunnel on the Swiss Central Railway. Railway Maier, 1860.
  • Ventilation and cooling long Alpine tunnels. Vienna 1881.
  • Iron superstructure system Pressel. Vienna 1886.
  • Les chemins de fer en Turquie d' Asie. Zurich 1902.
University of Stuttgart Geislinger Steige Chemins de Fer Ottomans d'Anatolie İzmit Neue Deutsche Biographie Integrated Authority File
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