Georg Wilhelm Alexander Hans Graf von Arco (30 August 1869 in
Großgorschütz
Gorzyce is a village and the seat of Gmina Gorzyce in Wodzisław County, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. It lies near the border with the Czech Republic, approximately south-west of Wodzisław Śląski.
History
The area became part of the emerg ...
– 5 May 1940 in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
) was a
German physicist
This is a list of Germans, German physicists.
A
* Ernst Abbe
* Max Abraham
* Gerhard Abstreiter
* Michael Adelbulner
* Martin Aeschlimann
* Georg von Arco
* Manfred von Ardenne
* Peter Armbruster
* Leo Arons
* Markus Aspelmeyer
* Felix Auerbac ...
,
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
pioneer, and one of the joint founders of the "''Society for Wireless Telegraphy''" which became the
Telefunken
Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the ''Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ('General electricity company').
The name "Telefunken" ap ...
company. He was an
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
and the
technical director
A technical director (TD) is usually a senior technical person within e.g. a software company, engineering firm, film studio, theatre company or television studio. This person usually has the highest level of skill within a specific technical f ...
of Telefunken. He was crucial in the development of wireless technology in Europe.
Arco served for a time as an assistant to
Adolf Slaby
Adolf Karl Heinrich Slaby (18 April 1849 – 6 April 1913) was a German electronics pioneer and the first Professor of electro-technology at the Technical University of Berlin (1886).
Education
Slaby was born in Berlin, the son of a bookbinde ...
, who was close to
William II, German Emperor
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918. Despite strengthening the German Emp ...
. Until 1930, Arco was one of the two
managing director
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
s of the company. He participated in the development of high performance
tube
Tube or tubes may refer to:
* ''Tube'' (2003 film), a 2003 Korean film
* ''The Tube'' (TV series), a music related TV series by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom
* "Tubes" (Peter Dale), performer on the Soccer AM television show
* Tube (band), a ...
transmitters. Together with his teacher, Slaby, he was considerably involved in the study and development of high-frequency engineering in Germany. He was a
Monist
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
and a
pacifist
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...
. Between 1921-22, he was a chairman of the German Monist Federation.
Early years
Arco was born on the estate of his father, Count
Alexander Karl von Arco, in
Großgorschütz
Gorzyce is a village and the seat of Gmina Gorzyce in Wodzisław County, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. It lies near the border with the Czech Republic, approximately south-west of Wodzisław Śląski.
History
The area became part of the emerg ...
,
Upper Silesia
Upper Silesia ( pl, Górny Śląsk; szl, Gůrny Ślůnsk, Gōrny Ślōnsk; cs, Horní Slezsko; german: Oberschlesien; Silesian German: ; la, Silesia Superior) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, located ...
,
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
(now
Gorzyce, Poland). He belonged to the Arco family, of Italian origin. His noble title was abolished when Germany became a republic after the First World War. As a child he was interested in
machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to na ...
s of all kinds, but after graduating from the Maria Magdalenen High School in
Breslau (now
Wrocław
Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...
, Poland) in 1889, he did not study engineering sciences, but instead attended mathematical and physical lectures at the
University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...
. Afterwards he took up a military career, a family tradition. After three years with the military, however, he left to study mechanical engineering and electro-technology in the technical university in
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Prussia, it is best known for Charlottenburg Palace, the ...
, Berlin, from 1893. There he became acquainted with Professor
Adolf Slaby
Adolf Karl Heinrich Slaby (18 April 1849 – 6 April 1913) was a German electronics pioneer and the first Professor of electro-technology at the Technical University of Berlin (1886).
Education
Slaby was born in Berlin, the son of a bookbinde ...
, who had participated in
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (; 25 April 187420 July 1937) was an Italians, Italian inventor and electrical engineering, electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based Wireless telegrap ...
's transmission experiments on the coast of the
English Channel
The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
.
Building on these attempts, Arco and Slaby in the summer of 1897 used the free-standing bell tower of the Church of the Redeemer,
Potsdam
Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...
, as an
antenna
Antenna ( antennas or antennae) may refer to:
Science and engineering
* Antenna (radio), also known as an aerial, a transducer designed to transmit or receive electromagnetic (e.g., TV or radio) waves
* Antennae Galaxies, the name of two collid ...
, to verify and understand Marconi's experiments. Here the first German antenna system for wireless telegraphy was established. On 27 August a radio transmission to the German naval base "Kongsnaes," 1.6 kilometers away, was successful.
In 1928 a plaque was fixed over the door of the bell tower of the Church of the Redeemer to commemorate to this feat. In the centre of the plaque, which is made from green
dolomite Dolomite may refer to:
*Dolomite (mineral), a carbonate mineral
*Dolomite (rock), also known as dolostone, a sedimentary carbonate rock
*Dolomite, Alabama, United States, an unincorporated community
*Dolomite, California, United States, an unincor ...
, is
Atlas
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth.
Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...
with the globe, surrounded by lightning and the text: "At this place in 1897 Professor Adolf Slaby and Count von Arco erected the first German antenna system for
wireless communication
Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...
".
On 7 October 1897, the first radio link from
Schöneberg
Schöneberg () is a locality of Berlin, Germany. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a separate borough including the locality of Friedenau. Together with the former borough of Tempelhof it is now part of the new borough of Tempelh ...
to
Rangsdorf
Rangsdorf is a municipality in the district of Teltow-Fläming in Brandenburg in Germany. It has an airfield p to 1940 a genuine commercial airportfrom where on 20 July 1944 Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg took off on his fateful attempt to ass ...
in Berlin was successful, and the following summer
Jüterbog
Jüterbog () is a historic town in north-eastern Germany, in the Teltow-Fläming district of Brandenburg. It is on the Nuthe river at the northern slope of the Fläming hill range, about southwest of Berlin.
History
The Slavic settlement of ' ...
, about 65 km (40 mi) southwest of Berlin, could be reached.
AEG
In 1898, at the end of his studies, Arco went to work as an engineer at the Kabelwerk Oberspree plant of
AEG. At first Arco was responsible as a laboratory engineer for testing various
electrical cable
An electrical cable is an assembly of one or more wires running side by side or bundled, which is used to carry electric current.
One or more electrical cables and their corresponding connectors may be formed into a ''cable assembly'', whic ...
types, but also, through continued contact with Slaby, introduced and developed wireless telegraphy at AEG.
Telefunken
Patent disputes between Siemens and AEG resulted in both companies, at the behest of
William II, German Emperor
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918. Despite strengthening the German Emp ...
, founding a common enterprise, the Society for Wireless Telegraphy Ltd. The company's
telegraphic address
A telegraphic address or cable address was a unique identifier code for a recipient of telegraph messages. Operators of telegraph services regulated the use of telegraphic addresses to prevent duplication. Rather like a uniform resource locator ( ...
,
Telefunken
Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the ''Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ('General electricity company').
The name "Telefunken" ap ...
, eventually became the company name. Arco greatly increased the power and range of early transmitters. In this regard he surpassed the ''Löschfunkensender'' of
Max Wien
Max Karl Werner Wien (; 25 December 1866 – 22 February 1938) was a German physicist and the director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Jena. He was born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), the son of the co-own ...
, which had already exhibited a substantially better efficiency than the ''Knallfunkensender'' of
Ferdinand Braun
Karl Ferdinand Braun (; 6 June 1850 – 20 April 1918) was a German electrical engineer, inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of radio and television technology: he shared the ...
, and in addition could send on a narrow frequency band.
Nauen radio station
Arco's greatest service lay in the development of the large
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
at
Nauen
Nauen is a small town in the Havelland district, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is chiefly known for Nauen Transmitter Station, the world's oldest preserved radio transmitting installation.
Geography
Nauen is situated within the Havelland Luch glac ...
, 20 miles west of Berlin, thereby helping Telefunken to become a firm of worldwide reputation. In 1909 he equipped it with a ''Löschfunksender'', a
quenched-spark transmitter
A spark-gap transmitter is an obsolete type of radio transmitter which generates radio waves by means of an electric spark."Radio Transmitters, Early" in Spark-gap transmitters were the first type of radio transmitter, and were the main type used ...
, and Nauen changed from being a research station into a station with regular radio traffic. Now contact could be made with the
African colonies and naval vessels at sea. A decade later, in 1918, the transmitting power had increased tenfold. The station used a new transmitter technology introduced in 1912, a high frequency alternator (similar to an
Alexanderson alternator) with magnetic frequency multiplier converter. This permitted the production of undamped
continuous waves with high power. This development was due to the substantial involvement of Arco. It stimulated
electron tube experiments.
Philosophical and ideological activities
While Slaby continued working in the university, Arco pursued philosophical activities. He associated himself with the
Monist
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
movement and the
Berlin Circle
The Berlin Circle (german: die Berliner Gruppe) was a group that maintained logical empiricist views about philosophy.
History
Berlin Circle was created in the late 1920s by Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Grelling and Walter Dubislav and composed o ...
for Empirical Philosophy, as well as the
pacifist
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...
movement during the
First World War
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 ...
as a founding member and chairman of the ''
Bund Neues Vaterland''. He belonged to the German Monist League, whose chairman he was from 1921 to 1922. In 1923 he was joint founder of the Society of Friends of New Russia, because of which he celebrated his 60th birthday in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, which was unusual for someone in his position.
He was an advisory member of the Abraham Lincoln Foundation, a German branch of the
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...
.
Death and afterwards
After his death, Arco was accorded the honour of a civic funeral by Berlin. The tended grave is in the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf, a large cemetery southwest of Berlin. The Berlin Senate had a memorial plaque erected at Albrechtstrasse 49/50 in the
Mariendorf
Mariendorf () is a locality in the southern Tempelhof-Schöneberg borough of Berlin.
Geography
Mariendorf is situated between the localities of Tempelhof in the north and Marienfelde and Lichtenrade in the south. To the west it shares a border w ...
area of
Tempelhof
Tempelhof () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. It is the location of the former Tempelhof Airport, one of the earliest commercial airports in the world. The former airport and surroundings are now a park called ...
. In
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg () is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Prussia, it is best known for Charlottenburg Palace, the ...
, Havelstrasse was renamed Arcostrasse in 1950, in memory of this pioneer of radio engineering. Also in
Nauen
Nauen is a small town in the Havelland district, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is chiefly known for Nauen Transmitter Station, the world's oldest preserved radio transmitting installation.
Geography
Nauen is situated within the Havelland Luch glac ...
, where Telefunken has had a working transmission station since the beginning of the 20th century, there is another road named after him.
The town of
Arco, Idaho
Arco is a city in Butte County, Idaho, Butte County, Idaho, United States. The population was 879 as of the 2020 United States census, down from 995 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. Arco is the county seat and largest city in Butte ...
, was named after him in 1903. In 1955 this small town in eastern Idaho became the first community in the world ever to be lit by electricity generated by nuclear power.
Notes
References
External reading
*Margot Fuchs: ''Georg von Arco (1869–1940): Ingenieur, Pazifist, Technischer Direktor von Telefunken''. Diepholz/Berlin
GNT Verlag 2004, .
External articles
Graf von Arco
MaerkischeAllgemeine.de Arco, Georg Graf von (Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf),
Märkische Allgemeine
The ''Märkische Allgemeine'' (also known as the MAZ) is a regional, daily newspaper published by the ''Märkische Verlags- und Druckgesellschaft mbH'' for the area in and around the state capital of Brandenburg, Potsdam in Germany.
The newspaper ...
, newspaper for
Bundesland Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a states of Germany, state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an ar ...
.
Google.com Literature by and about George von Arco in the catalog of the
German National Library
The German National Library (DNB; german: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to colle ...
.
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arco, Georg Von
1869 births
1940 deaths
People from Wodzisław County
20th-century German inventors
German pacifists
20th-century German physicists
Georg
People from the Province of Silesia
Radio pioneers
Technical University of Berlin alumni
Silesian-German people