Ressel's
Biography
Born - 29 June 1796 in Chrudim,
Habsburg Monarchy
Died - 9 October 1857 in Ljubljana, Austrian empire
His father Anton Herman
was a native German speaker, and his mother Marie
Konvičková was a native Czech speaker. Ressel
studied Artillery school in České budějovice and
then in 1812 left and started to attend the
University of Vienna where he studied forestry
academy and graduated in 1817.
After his studies he started to work as
a forester near Trieste. There he saw steamer, which
used two water mill wheels to propel itself forward,
and was thinking, of implementing his screw
propeller on this boat.
His first sketch
of a screw propeller in 1812
His
screw propeller is based on Archimedes' screw.
His first successful test of this propeller on
boat was in 1826, and year later, in 1827 he
received the Austrian patent for his propeller.
In the year 1829 he built the first
screw-steamer called Civetta. Civetta had
displacement of 33 tons, and with Ressel's new
propeller it could reach speeds up to 6 knots.
Unfortunately further experiments were stopped,
because the piping on the engine started to
leak. Because he did not have enough funds to
fix this problem, he could not continue on his
project and started to work on other inventions
in privacy. Also in the year 1831 his patent was
discarded. Britain and Ireland started to use
his screw propeller in 1840, and in 1852 British
navy wrote out a price to whoever could prove
that he/she is the first inventor of screw
propeller. Russels send them all his documents
and drafts about the screw propeller, but he
never received an answer back.
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