Wilhelm August Julius Albert (24 January 1787 – 4 July 1846) 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 ...

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

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

administrator, best remembered as the first person to record observations of

metal fatigue In materials science, fatigue is the initiation and propagation of cracks in a material due to cyclic loading. Once a fatigue crack has initiated, it grows a small amount with each loading cycle, typically producing striations on some parts o ...

. Albert was born in

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

and showed early talent as a musician before embarking on the study of

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

in 1803. Experience in the

Harz The Harz () is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' derives from the Middle High German ...

mountains awakened an interest in mining and, in 1806, he was appointed to the Mining and Forestry Office in

Clausthal Clausthal-Zellerfeld is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located in the southwestern part of the Harz mountains. Its population is approximately 15,000. The City is the location of the Clausthal University of Technology. The health resort ...

. By 1836 he was directing the entire mining industry of the Harz region. In 1829, he observed, studied and reported the failure of

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

mine hoist In underground mining a hoist or winder is used to raise and lower conveyances within the mine shaft. Modern hoists are normally powered using electric motors, historically with direct current drives utilizing Ward Leonard control machines and l ...

chains arising from repeated small loadings, the first recorded account of metal fatigue. He built a machine which repeatedly loaded a chain. His finding was that fatigue was not associated with an accidental overload, but was dependent on load and the number of repetitions of load cycles. He invented a twisted steel cable, later known as an "Albert Rope", which was first used in the Clausthal ''Caroline'' mine in 1834 and was the forerunner of the modern

wire rope Steel wire rope (right hand lang lay) Wire rope is several strands of metal wire twisted into a helix forming a composite ''rope'', in a pattern known as ''laid rope''. Larger diameter wire rope consists of multiple strands of such laid rope in a ...

. He died in Clausthal.

References

1787 births 1846 deaths German mining engineers 19th-century German engineers Engineers from Hanover Engineers from Lower Saxony {{Germany-engineer-stub