Ernst Otto Schlick (16 June 1840,

Grimma Grimma ( hsb, Grima) is a town in Saxony, Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany, on the left bank of the Mulde, southeast of Leipzig. Founded in 1170, it is part of the Leipzig (district), Leipzig district. Location The town is in ...

- 10 April 1913,

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

naval engineer A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

. He tried to solve the problem of rolling of ships at sea by installing large

gyroscope A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rota ...

s. The gyroscopic "stabilizers" gave disappointing or dangerous results in practice. An Englishman before him in 1868,

Henry Bessemer Sir Henry Bessemer (19 January 1813 – 15 March 1898) was an English inventor, whose steel-making process would become the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century for almost one hundred years from 1856 to 1950. He ...

had tried to use hydraulics and a spirit level watched by the steersman to stabilize ship rolls, also with dangerous results. The gyroscopic stabilizer idea was later developed further by the US American inventor

Elmer Ambrose Sperry Elmer Ambrose Sperry Sr. (October 12, 1860 – June 16, 1930) was an American inventor and entrepreneur, most famous for construction, two years after Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe, of the gyrocompass and as founder of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. H ...

but this system could hold the ship at an extreme angle for prolonged periods.Kreiselstabilisatoren in German Wikipedia entry on ship stabilisers By the time these stabilizers were abandoned, gyroscopes had already found their place in ship navigation as

gyrocompass A gyrocompass is a type of non-magnetic compass which is based on a fast-spinning disc and the rotation of the Earth (or another planetary body if used elsewhere in the universe) to find geographical direction automatically. The use of a gyroc ...

es and in control systems.

Life and career

Schlick studied at the

Dresden Technical University TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...

from 1858. In 1863 in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

he founded a dockyard and engineering workshop which was later bought by Austrians. From 1869 to 1875 he worked as a

, firstly in Pest and then in

Fiume Rijeka ( , , ; also known as Fiume hu, Fiume, it, Fiume ; local Chakavian: ''Reka''; german: Sankt Veit am Flaum; sl, Reka) is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia (after Zagreb and Split). It is located in Primor ...

, both in the

Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

. In 1875, he became managing director of the Norddeutsche Schiffbau-Gesellschaft in

Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the J ...

, where he oversaw the building of many freight steamers and also some warships, including the German Royal Yacht Hohenzollern. From 1882 to 1895 he was director of the German office of the international ship registration institute,

Bureau Veritas Bureau Veritas is a French company specialized in testing, inspection and certification founded in 1828. It operates in a variety of sectors, including building and infrastructure (27% of revenue), agri-food and commodities (23% of revenue), ...

, in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

. From 1896 until his retirement in 1908 he was director of

Germanischer Lloyd The Germanischer Lloyd SE was a classification society based in the city of Hamburg, Germany. It ceased to exist as an independent entity in September 2013 as a result of its merger with Norway's DNV (Det Norske Veritas) to become DNV GL. Before ...

, another ship registration institute in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

, where he encouraged better design for fast steam ships.

Contributions to engineering

Together with A. van Hüllen, he translated Sir William H White's "A manual of naval architecture" into German (English original published in 1877, German version published in Leipzig in 1879). He wrote a handbook for iron ship construction ("Handbuch für den Eisenschisfbau") which was published in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

in 1890. In addition to his work on the rolling movement of ships, he investigated how to reduce vibrations in

steam-engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...

driven ships, inventing an instrument to measure those vibrations.

Books

*"Handbuch für den Schiffbau" White W H (Leipzig, 1879) *"Handbuch für den Eisenschiffbau" Schlick E O (Leipzig, 1890)

References

Sources

Online biography
(in German) *Brockhaus Encyclopedia 1894-6 {{DEFAULTSORT:Schlick, Ernst Otto Engineers from Dresden TU Dresden alumni German expatriates in Hungary People from Grimma 1840 births 1913 deaths