August Riedinger (9 October 1845 – 15 January 1919) Augsburg city archive was a German businessman who operated gas companies in Germany and Europe and also participated in balloon manufacturing.

Life

Riedinger was born in 1845 as the son of the industrialist

Ludwig August Riedinger Ludwig may refer to: People and fictional characters * Ludwig (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Ludwig (surname), including a list of people * Ludwig Ahgren, or simply Ludwig, American YouTube live streamer and c ...

in Augsburg. After six years of studies at the Zurich Polytechnic he entered his father's machinery and bronzeworks business in 1877. Richard Winkler page 574 His father died in 1879 Vogt, Wilhelm when the business had 25 gasworks in Bavaria, and another 42 in the rest of Europe and a number of gas plants for factories and public buildings. L. A. Riedinger Augsburg In 1883 Riedinger took over the business and in 1887 when the company converted to the Joint stock company , he became a member of its

supervisory board In corporate governance, a governance board also known as council of delegates are chosen by the stockholders of a company to promote their interests through the governance of the company and to hire and fire the board of directors. In civil s ...

. By then he had already founded the (AG United

Gasworks A gasworks or gas house is an industrial plant for the production of flammable gas. Many of these have been made redundant in the developed world by the use of natural gas, though they are still used for storage space. Early gasworks Coal ...

) in Augsburg which by 1896 had grown to 17 gas work companies, for example in

Bolzano Bolzano ( or ; german: Bozen, (formerly ); bar, Bozn; lld, Balsan or ) is the capital city of the province of South Tyrol in northern Italy. With a population of 108,245, Bolzano is also by far the largest city in South Tyrol and the third la ...

Lugano Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...

and

Marburg Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approxima ...

.Frühschütz, Oliver
Vereinigte Gaswerke A.G.
Retrieved 2008-07-15. He also worked in the executive committee of the German gas industry association (). In 1889 he took part in the construction and operation of the . Editors of German Wikipedia (a local railway). From 1888 Riedinger began working with August von Parseval and Rudolf Hans Bartsch von Sigsfeld on the development of dirigible

airship An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. In early ...

s. Due to the high development costs he auctioned off his museum collection in 1894. In 1897 he founded the , which until the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

produced about 4,000 unmanned military

kite balloon A kite balloon is a tethered balloon which is shaped to help make it stable in low and moderate winds and to increase its lift. It typically comprises a streamlined envelope with stabilising features and a harness or yoke connecting it to the mai ...

s (hydrogen filled balloons shaped to act as a kite).Schmidt, Werner; Hammer-Schmidt, Claudia. . Retrieved 2008-07-15. In 1906 at the the first of the

Parseval airships The Parsevals were 22 airships built between 1909 and 1919 by the Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft (LFG) following the design of August von Parseval. In the 1920s and 1930s, three more airships were built following the Parseval-Naatz (PN) design. As ...

was built, the . Later in 1931 from the same ''Ballonfabriks launch site Auguste Piccard made the first ascent into the Stratosphere. In 1910 Riedinger founded a company to manufacture

Blau gas Blau gas (german: Blaugas) is an artificial illuminating gas, similar to propane, named after its inventor, Hermann Blau of Augsburg, Germany. Not or rarely used or produced today, it was manufactured by decomposing mineral oils in retorts by ...

, a fuel gas produced from

Petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

, named after its inventor Hermann Blau. Blau gas was burned for lighting and heating; and later also used as fuel for the

LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin LZ 127 ''Graf Zeppelin'' () was a German passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled rigid airship that flew from 1928 to 1937. It offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service. Named after the German airship pioneer Ferdina ...

. In 1908 Riedinger was appointed as the and in 1912 became a committee member of the Association of the

Deutsches Museum The Deutsches Museum (''German Museum'', officially (English: ''German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology'')) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from ...

. He was also known for encouraging technical progress and as a patron of the arts. August Riedinger was married twice. His first wife Anna (1848–1882) was

Max von Pettenkofer Max Joseph Pettenkofer, ennobled in 1883 as Max Joseph von Pettenkofer (3 December 1818 – 10 February 1901) was a Bavarian chemist and hygienist. He is known for his work in practical hygiene, as an apostle of good water, fresh air and proper ...

's daughter. After Anna's early death he married Bertha Brandenberger in 1883, the daughter of the technical director of the Augsburg

Baumwollspinnerei am Stadtbach The Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei (''Leipzig Cotton Mill'') is an industrial site in Leipzig, Germany. Parts of this 10-hectare site in the district of Lindenau are used today by art galleries, studios and restaurants. Founded in 1884, the busine ...

(a cotton spinning mill). With each wife he had one son and one daughter.

References

* Augsburg city archive
Stadtarchiv Augsburg - Augsburger Persönlichkeiten
(German) * Frühschütz, Oliver

Retrieved 2008-07-15 * Vogt, Wilhelm. :wikisource:de:ADB:Riedinger, Ludwig August. '' Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie''. Bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Band 28 (1889), page 534 * Editors of German Wikipedia
August Riedinger
Retrieved 2008-07-15 * Retrieved 2008-07-15

Literature

* Augsburger Stadtlexikon 1998, 753f. (German) * Götz Frhr. von Pölnitz: ''Lebensbilder aus dem Bayerischen Schwaben''; Band 4 (German) {{DEFAULTSORT:Riedinger, August 1845 births 1919 deaths Businesspeople from Augsburg