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108 For Graz, the age of the railway began on 21 October 1844 with the opening of
the Southern Railway section from Mürzzuschlag to Graz.
One of the most important initiators of the Southern Railway connecting
the Danube basin and the Adriatic Sea was Franz Xaver Riepl. Born in Graz, he
worked as a professor of mineralogy and commodity economics at the Vien-
na Polytechnic. In 1824 Archduke Johann commissioned him to reform the
iron industry at Erzberg in Styria. Riepl recognised that the invention of the
steam railway in England could only be put into practice because the English
iron industry had already reached such an advanced level of technology that
it was possible to produce railway tracks, steam boilers and locomotives. If
Austria wanted to build steam engines, it had to overcome its backwardness
beforehand.
This in turn necessitated the introduction of hard coal in the smelting in-
dustry and the construction of rolling mills based on the English model in-
stead of the iron hammers previously used. In Witkowitz/Vitkovice (Czechia)
Riepl was able to put his ideas into practice.
Finally, he developed the project of a locomotive railway from Vienna via the
Ostrava coal district and the salt deposits in Bochnia in Galicia to the Russian
border near Brody and from Vienna to Trieste, a stretch of 1,500 kilometres
across the Danube Monarchy.
Riepl’s Northern Railway was made possible by the banker Salomon Roth-
schild. The first section from Floridsdorf to Wagram was opened on 17 Novem-
ber 1837.
Soon the rails extended from Vienna to the south.
In 1842 the first Southern Railway section to Gloggnitz was completed. Carl
Ritter von Ghega was responsible for the planning and execution of the fur-
ther route to the Adriatic.
Without Archduke Johann, however, this railway would not have passed
through Styria. It was Johann who created the conditions for the construction
of the first railway line crossing the Alps, the Semmering railway.
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book Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech"
Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech
- Title
- Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech
- Authors
- Uwe Schichler
- Josef W. Wohinz
- Publisher
- Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- German
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-85125-688-1
- Size
- 20.0 x 25.0 cm
- Pages
- 124
- Category
- Technik
Table of contents
- Editor’s foreword 8
- Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech 11
- The Graz Tech: A tradition of innovation 12
- Nikola Tesla: Milestones in his life 14
- Nikola Tesla: Student at the Graz Tech 20
- Nikola Tesla: Honorary doctor of technical sciences 28
- People shape the development of the Tech 37
- References 38
- Nikola Tesla: Visionary and Inventor Contributions to scientific and industrial development 41
- Development of electrical engineering from 1850 to 1950 42
- The problem of the commutator 43
- The rotating magnetic field: Polyphase alternating current system 43
- The Niagara Falls power station: Direct current or alternating current? 44
- High frequency, the Tesla transformer and Wardenclyffe Tower 54
- Remote-controlled ships and robots 62
- Hotel room 3327 in New York 64
- Tesla’s innovations: visible in the 21st century 65
- References 65
- Constant development and unrelenting progress is the goal… Stages in the development of the Universalmuseum Joanneum 67
- The main reasons behind its establishment and their classification in the history of museums 70
- Original scope 72
- Outline of the course of development 73
- The early Joanneum (1811 to 1887) 75
- The Joanneum from 1888 to 2002 82
- The State Museum or Universalmuseum Joanneum GmbH: Stepping out into the Future 87
- References 90
- The architecture of the high-voltage laboratory: An exciting architectural monument to technology 91
- Design principle 94
- Tasks and test facilities 97
- Postscript 98
- References 98
- ‘ Technology is the pride of our age’ (Peter Rosegger) A technological history of Graz in the 19th century 99
- References 118
- List of authors 120