Fascinating facts about Carl von Linde inventor of the refrigerator in 1876.

In 1871 Linde published an essay on improved refrigeration techniques. This caught the interest of a large number of breweries, and soon Linde was supplying them with his refrigerating machines, while constantly working to improve them.

In 1878 Linde made the decision to put all his time and effort into the production of refrigerating machinery; he gave up his professorship and founded a refrigerating company, Lindes Eismaschinen AG, (now Linde AG) in Wiesbaden. Business went well; the company sold products to breweries, slaughterhouses and cold storage companies all over Europe.

Both systems used the principle of cooling gas; until then cooling had taken place mechanically. In 1894, following a request from the Guinness brewery in Dublin for a new cooling technique, Linde developed a revolutionary new method (Linde technique) for the liquefaction of large quantities of air.

Linde's method was based on the works of James Prescott Joule and William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), and the introduction of the countercurrent technique. Air is sucked into the machine, where it is compressed, pre-cooled and decompressed; at this point it cools down. In the countercurrent heat exchanger, the air which has already been cooled is used to cool more compressed air, which again cools the next input of air. Continual repetition leads to further lowering of the temperature until the air is liquified.

Professor von Linde is thus one of the founding fathers of the Bavarian Boiler Review Association and the Munich Thermal Testing Station. In the Polytechnic Association he examined applications for a Bavarian patent and served as part of the Berlin commission that reformed German patent law.

Back in Munich and armed with an honorary professorship (it was converted into a full professorship without teaching duties in 1900), von Linde took the position of Bavarian district chairman of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) in 1892 and was elected chairman of the Bavarian Boiler Association. In 1895 he was appointed to the board of trustees at the German Physical-Technical Institute, one year later to the Bavarian Academy of Science. In 1898 he joined the Göttingen Association for Applied Physics and Mathematics, from which the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and ultimately the Max Planck Society emerged.

In 1904 and 1905 he served as president of the VDI, and in 1903 he immersed himself with Oskar von Miller in the founding of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Carl von Linde remained on the museum’s board until he was 80 years old.

As always, however, his main attention was focused on the Linde Company and its subsidiaries. His practical work in the area of refrigeration and later in air liquefaction and air separation shows the entrepreneur-engineer side of von Linde - and thus his true calling.

His entrepreneurial side was often in demand on many supervisory boards - of a few subsidiaries as well as of the locomotive manufacturer Krauss & Co., the Mainz Aktienbrauerei, the Trieberg Electricity Company, The Güldner engine company and Maschinenfabrik Sürth. This multifaceted and diverse range of commitments required an active travel schedule.

Although von Linde withdrew more and more from his active working life starting in 1910, he held on to some of his supervisory and advisory activities until the end of his life. His two sons Friedrich and Richard and his son-in-law Rudolf Wucherer (who was married to Linde’s youngest daughter Elisabeth) carried on his life’s work. Two of his four daughters married pastors and the eldest married psychiatrist Dr. Karl Ranke, who also sometimes served on the company’s Supervisory Board.

Carl von Linde died in 1934 at the age of 92. Over the course of his life he was awarded three honorary Doctorates, the Bavarian crown achievement medal, and was honored with elevation to personal nobility status among many other distinguishing honors.

Linde AG is a manufacturer of refrigeration technology and other chemical products headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany. The company has annual revenues of $12.2 billion and 47,000 employees (2004). In 1878, Carl von Linde (a German engineer who developed the basics of modern refrigeration technology) put all put his efforts into the production of refrigerating machinery and founded Lindes Eismaschinen AG.

TO LEARN MORE

RELATED INFORMATION:
The Entrepreneur    from The Great Idea Finder
Invention of the Refrigerator   from The Great Idea Finder

ON THE BOOKSHELF:
The Social Shaping of Technology
by Donald MacKenzie / Paperback: 462 pages / Open University Press; 2 edition (June 1, 1999)
The book argues that social scientists have devoted disproportionate attention to the effects of technology on society, and tended to ignore the more fundamental question of what shapes technology in the first place
Linde: History of a Technology Corporation, 1879-2004
by Hans-Liudger Dienel / Hardcover: 352 pages / Palgrave Macmillan (September 4, 2004)
Today, the Linde Group, headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany, is a global technology company dedicated to gas and engineering, material handling and refrigeration. This book examines the history of this company in the context of the history of technology in industry.

ON THE WEB:
Carl von Linde
Despite the tight financial situation in the parson’s large household, von Linde was able to convince his father to allow him to study mechanical engineering at the leading technical university of the time, the Polytechnikum in Zurich, Switzerland.
(URL: web.linde.com/WGAP/chronicle/html/default/admr-5yvmaz.en.0)
The Linde Group History
At a sometimes staggering pace and with a great love of experimentation, Carl von Linde created a new industry within just a few decades: refrigeration.
(URL: www.linde.com/WGAP/internet/html/default/pger-67mjzk.en.0)
Refrigerator-Great Achievments
Which of the appliances in your home would be the hardest to live without? The most frequent answer to that question in a recent survey was the refrigerator.
(URL: www.greatachievements.org/?id=2958)
How the Refrigerator Got Its Hum
Article by Ruth Schwartz Cowan from The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got its Hum, Donald MacKenzie, Judy Wajcman, eds. Open University Press, 1985
(URL: www.towson.edu/~sallen/COURSES/311/ESSAYS/HowtheRefrigerator.html)
Chemical Achievers
It was the achievement of Carl von Linde in 1902 to take oxygen from the air itself—and he was soon extracting it in quantities approaching one thousand cubic feet per hour
(URL: www.chemheritage.org/EducationalServices/chemach/tpg/cvl.html)

DID YOU KNOW?:

• Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the Diesel engine, studied under Carl Linde at the Polytechnic School in Munich
• The Linde AG, founded by the German scientist-entrepreneur Carl von Linde in 1879 with the name of "Society for Lindes Ice machines" today is the oldest German engineering company still in operation.