Heinrich Gerber (Johann Gottfried Heinrich Gerber; November 18, 1832 in

Hof, Bavaria Hof () is a town on the banks of the Saale in the northeastern corner of the Germany, German state of Bavaria, in the Franconian region, at the Czech Republic, Czech border and the forested Fichtelgebirge and Frankenwald upland regions. The town h ...

– January 3, 1912 in

Munich, Germany Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

) was a German civil engineer and inventor of the Gerber girder. He received several patents for his systems for building bridges.

Background

Gerber studied at the Polytechnic schools in Nuremberg and Munich, and in 1852 he joined the Bavarian Staatsbaudienst, where he worked on the railways. He assisted in the design of the Großhesseloher bridge and helped to develop the Pauli girder used in the bridge. After its completion in 1857, Gerber was appointed chief engineer of the Maschinenfabrik Klett bridge department in Nuremberg. When the company in 1859 was awarded the contract for the construction of the railway bridge over the Rhine at

Mainz Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main (river), Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-we ...

he decided to manufacture the bridge parts in a temporary facility near the site in

Gustavsburg The double city of Ginsheim-Gustavsburg in the northwest of the Groß-Gerau district in the German state of Hesse, has about 16,000 inhabitants. It is part of what is called the Rhine-Main region in Germany which has the city of Frankfurt am Main a ...

. Gerber moved in 1860 with his family to the assembling site in order to manage the manufacture and construction of the bridge until its completion in 1863. In his subsequent time in Nuremberg, he was working on continuous

structural system A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

s, which could be calculated more easily. In 1866 he was awarded the Bavarian patent ″Balkenträger mit freiliegenden Stützpunkten″ (''girder with exposed bases''). This

cantilever bridge A cantilever bridge is a bridge built using structures that project horizontally into space, supported on only one end (called cantilevers). For small footbridges, the cantilevers may be simple beam (structure), beams; however, large cantilever ...

system was first realized in 1867 at a bridge over the

Regnitz The Regnitz is a river in Franconia, Germany. It is a left tributary of the Main and is in length. The river is formed by the confluence of the rivers Rednitz and Pegnitz, which meet in the city of Fürth. From there the Regnitz runs northward ...

at Bamberg and in the

Main Main may refer to: Geography * Main River (disambiguation) **Most commonly the Main (river) in Germany * Main, Iran, a village in Fars Province *"Spanish Main", the Caribbean coasts of mainland Spanish territories in the 16th and 17th centuries ...

Bridge in

Haßfurt Haßfurt (; English: Hassfurt) is a town in Bavaria, Germany, capital of the Haßberge district. It is situated on the river Main, 20 km east of Schweinfurt and 30 km northwest of Bamberg. In 1852, Ludwig's Western Railway reached the ...

. This construction spread rapidly and became known worldwide as Gerber

Beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

. 1868 Gerber went back to Gustavsburg to manage the construction of the second track of the Rhine bridge. Then he located with an office in Munich. As part of the conversion of the Nuremberg headquarters in ''Maschinenbau-Actiengesellschaft Nürnberg'', in 1873, the plant ''MAN-Werk Gustavsburg'' and his Munich office was merged to Süddeutsche Bridge AG in Munich and became independent with Gerber as Chief Executive. During this time he dealt among other things with development work on intersections of

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembl ...

, the other duties of the executive board were to him less. At his own suggestion, this company was merged in 1884 into the ''Maschinenbau-Aktiengesellschaft Nürnberg'' (now MAN). Gerber was a board member there and had a seat in the technical advisory board. He devoted himself to continue his research and consulting activities.

Sources

* * Ludwig Freytag, ''Heinrich Gerber, Altmeister der deutschen Eisenbaukunst''. In: Conrad Matschoss (Ed.): ''Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technik und Industrie''. vol 10. Springer, Berlin 1920, , p. 93–102. �
online

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerber, Heinrich People from Hof, Bavaria 1832 births 1912 deaths Engineers from Bavaria