Generations of school children in Austria used to learn that Siegfried Marcus, the master mechanic born in Northern Germany who later came to live Austria, was one of the pioneers of the motor car. He made the first automobile, in which he – to the horror of the neighbors of his workshop – went on a few test drives in Vienna. It was only in the Nazi era that the Jewish inventor was suddenly denied his priority. Daimler and Benz received the victor’s palm. Marcus was no longer even mentioned. Alfred Buberl, the Austrian historian of technology, then published a number of works in which he reestablished Marcus’ status emphatically, even hymnically. Ursula Bürbaumer, a young economic historian born in Upper Austria, last year did full justice to the genius of Siegfried Marcus in her thesis, but without turning him into a myth. The inventor, who died a hundred years ago, did so much for mechanics and especially for the development of the mobile internal combustion engine that he has no need of being mythicised.
An Age of Invention
Siegfried Liepmann Marcus was born on 18 September 1831 in Malchin, Mecklenburg, as the third son of Liepmann Marcus and his wife Rosa. His father was a businessman and the head of the local Jewish community. Siegfried was first apprenticed to a mechanic and then went on to a technical school in Berlin. It was an epoch when new inventions were made every day, and the possibilities for technical progress were virtually unlimited. In Berlin Marcus was given an opportunity to get practical training under Werner Siemens. The firm of Siemens & Halske was putting up the first big telegraph line on the continent. While working for them, Marcus produced his first invention, a telegraphic relay. This brought him a reward of 1,000 thalers from the government of Saxony.
In 1852, Marcus moved to Vienna where he found a job with Kraft, the official mechanic to the Imperial Court. He worked at the Mechanical Institute in the suburb of Erdberg and later in the physics department of the Josephsakademie, a training establishment for military surgeons, as an assistant to the physiologist Karl Ludwig.
Marcus’ enormous technical gifts must have been apparent very early. His flexibility and inventiveness made him a man whose services were in great demand. Not much time passed before he was able, in 1860, to open his own workshop at No. 107 Mariahilferstrasse (where a plaque commemorates him today). How varied the commissions were which he received may be seen from the wide spectrum of his numerous patents. In Austria alone, Marcus officially applied for 38 “imperial charters,” and his biographer Buberl even speaks of a total of “158 patented inventions.”
Marcus Makes a Name for Himself
As the years went by, Marcus acquired growing repute as a highly competent and innovative engineer. His success is clearly reflected in the many different inventions and technical developments emerging from his workshop. Commissioned by the chemical expert Carl von Auer, he designed an “apparatus for achieving uniform temperatures by means of a gas lamp.” In 1856, he invented the “artigaph,” an instrument which saved lithographers and copper engravers the trouble of having to draw their designs reversed, like a mirror image, on the stone or plate.
In 1856, he read a paper to the mathematics and natural science division of the Austrian Academy of Sciences on a “thermal column” he had developed. The Academy considered this important enough to award him an amount of 2,500 gulden. Other electrotechnical inventions included an “incandescent spirit lamp.”
The military also took an interest in this by then well-known inventor. He developed electromechanical naval mines, an electrically controlled central firing mechanism for artillery guns and a handgun capable of firing 30 shots per minute. For deep sea research, he designed an ignition device for mines and special whale-hunting knife, which was used by the Austrian North Pole expedition.
Photography and films might also claim Marcus as one of their pioneers: he constructed an “automatic image apparatus,” which he called “Photographie-Revue.” He also developed special equipment for Anton Kratky-Baschik, a showman and magician, who had owned a “Theater for Magic” since 1873 in the Vienna Prater.
Tutor to the Crown Prince
One of his early commissions brought Marcus in touch with the Habsburgs. Empress Elisabeth asked him to install an electric bell system, instead of the old manual bells, in the Imperial Palace, the Hofburg. Apparently, the Emperor was so satisfied with Marcus’ work that he appointed him physics tutor to Crown Prince Rudolph in 1870. So it is easy to see that Marcus was by no means the classic starving genius neglected by his contemporaries. On the contrary, he was enormously valued by his colleagues. He was a member of many professional societies, such as the Austrian Association of Engineers and Architects founded in 1848. He corresponded extensively with a number of important scientists of his time, such as Ernst Brücke, Johannes Ettinghausen and Ernst Mach.
Marcus’ whole life was wholly devoted to research and development in the area of mechanics. At an explosion in his workshop, he lost three fingers of his right hand. His private life took second rank to his work. He never married but for many years lived with a woman who bore him two daughters. Siegfried Marcus died on 1 July 1898 in his Vienna apartment at No. 4 Lindengasse. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Hütteldorf. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his death, his remains were transfered to an “honorary tomb” in the celebrities section of the Vienna Central Cemetery. A bust of Siegfried Marcus stands in Vienna’s Resselpark in front of the Technical University.
The Road to the Automobile
The idea of inventing an engine which would open up a new dimension of mobility intrigued many engineers in the late 19th century. Horsepower to replace horses was what they were looking for, and they soon found that an internal combustion engine, where the energy generated could act directly on the pistons, was the best solution. As regards fuels, there was a good deal of experimentation with combustible gases, liquid hydrocarbons and oil-based fuels. In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, oil wells had been exploited since the early 19th century in the Eastern province of Galicia, where the world’s first refinery went into operation in 1858. As early as the eighteen-sixties, Marcus recommended “Benzin” (i.e. gasoline) as a suitable motor fuel.
Marcus then started experimenting with ignition systems. He developed a system called “Wiener Zünder,” soon snapped up by the Austro-Hungarian navy for use in the defensive mining of the ports of Trieste and Venice. Marcus’ ignition was manufactured by the firm of Georg Sigl in Vienna. This patent also brought Marcus considerable financial success. Ursula Bürbaum writes: “As the first person in the history of internal combustion engine construction, he used this device to ignite a mixture of gasoline and air.” In 1883, Marcus took out a patent for a device to “carburate air,” i.e. a carburator.
What experts and apologists seem to be unable to agree on is whether or not Marcus was really the first to build a mobile internal combustion engine using gasoline. Although there are quite a number of reports and statements to the effect that Marcus “designed and constructed a petroleum engine” as early as the eighteen-seventies, there is only one photograph of the prototype in question which bears the following caption. “Petroleum (Benzin) engine for operating a road vehicle with a spring device to neutralize the explosion shocks-designed by Siegfried Marcus, 1870.” At an exhibition of engines and motors organized in 1884, critics complained that the “petroleum motor, Patent Siegfried Marcus” was not included.
At any rate, one specimen of a Marcus invention is still preserved in the Technical Museum in Vienna. It is a real motor car powered by a four-stroke engine, even though its roadworthiness suffers from some small deficiencies. In 1987, the car’s engine was started again after many years – it worked, but still no conclusive evidence could be found to prove that the car is older than the production year given so far: 1887-1888. That would make it two years younger than the first Daimler and Benz automobile. Its one-cylinder horizontal four-stroke engine was built by Märky, Bromovsky Schulz, an engineering company in Adamsthal. Unfortunately, Marcus omitted to take out a patent for his engine, which makes it all the more difficult to date it exactly. So there is no documentary proof that the car was produced before the Daimler and Benz vehicle. But it is uncontested that Marcus was the designer of the “first vehicle with gasoline engine.” His innovative versatility guarantees him a permanent place in the pantheon of Austrian inventors.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, April 18th, 2004 and is filed under history.