Polhem
NAME:
Polhem, Christopher
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Technological inventions
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
18 December 1661, Tingstade, Island of Gotland, Sweden
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
30 August 1751, Stockholm, Sweden. Aged 90
DISCIPLINE:
Scientist and technician
FIELD:
Mechanics/Industry
LANGUAGE:
Swedish
PARENTS:
Father: Wulf Christopher Polhammar
Mother: Miss Schening
SIBLINGS:
?
SPOUSE:
?
CHILDREN:
?
EDUCATION:
German school, Stockholm
University of Uppsala
MAJOR WORK:
“A brief account of the most famous mechanical inventions” (1729)
LIFE AND TIMES:
Polhem’s father was a prosperous merchant whose business failed. When he died in 1669, the eight-year old Polhem was sent to an uncle in Stockholm and briefly attended school there before his uncle also died.
Polhem then entered service with the Biorenklou family near Uppsala and later in Sormland, where he rose to become a steward of the estate. He became skilled in the use of a lathe and worked in a forge and carpenter’s shop, making household items and watches. He was so good at this that he became known all over the neighborhood for his mechanical abilites.
Polhem, however, knew that although he possessed an innate mechanical skill, he needed to acquire more scientific knowledge. With the help of local priests, he taught himself Latin and in 1687 he entered the University of Uppsala. He spent three years there, studying astronomy among other subjects but mainly concentrating on mechanical tasks. After repairing pendulum clocks he began work on restoring the mediaeval clock in the cathedral and after a year got it working.
As a result of this feat, he was invited to Stockholm around 1690 to make a model of a hoist frame for use in the mines and was given an annual salary by the king in the hope that he would come up with further innovations.
Mining was Sweden’s major industry, crucial to the economy, and it was in the mining industry that Polhem first made a name in Europe. In 1693 he completed an ore-extracting hoist (the Blankstot hoist at the Stora Kopparberg mine) constructed according to a new principle with the ore buckets moving along alternately reciprocating hanging beams. The hoist was pictured in a Dutch etching and created a great deal of interest outside Sweden.
In 1694 Polhem traveled with a friend in Europe, visiting Holland, France, Germany and England. He studied industrial equipment and made contacts in the scientific world such as the English mathematician <met> Wallis*. On his return to Sweden, a specially built laboratory was built for him to undertake research into pure mechanics and its applications. By this time, Polhem also wanted to make more in-depth investigations to establish the principles behind his inventions.
In 1698 he was made Director of Mining Engineering in Sweden and in the same year he completed his most famous mining engineering device, a hoist which he designed on the basis of rigorous mathematical deductions. The Karl XI hoist enabled normal hoists with cables to be powered by moving beams; the ends of the reciprocating beams moved in a circular way which made the cable bucket rotate. This meant that the wheel-house with the water-wheel could be situated at a distance from the mine. <work related to> Leibniz* had earlier tried to construct a similar device.
Polhem installed the hoist in Falun copper mine and put forward a plan to re-organize the mine so that all pumps and ore hoists using beams would be powered by three engines, or large water-wheels, at a distance from the mine. In 1700 Polhem was appointed Master of Construction in Falun copper mine.
He was passionate about technological development and about the application of scientific advances to industry, and was a co-founder of the Stiernsund industrial community at Husby in southern Dalarna.
There were already Swedish metal industries such as canon foundries and mints that used the products of the iron forge but at Stiernsund Polhem envisaged something new: mass production of converted metal goods by a mechanized production process. The factory at Stiernsund depended for its survival on Polhem’s inventiveness. It mostly produced smaller articles of iron, steel and bronze like pans, knives, brays, mirrors and locks.
The sheet metal required to manufacture these articles was produced in a roller mills of the kind later pioneered in England by <work related to> Hanbury*.. Everything at Stiernsund was based on hydraulic power and each stage of the manufacture was mechanized.
Polhem was not only concerned with the metal industry. He designed clock movements and machine tools for a clock factory at Stiernsund. He manufactured stocking looms, spinning frames and a cross-cutting machine for the textile industry, and constructed ploughs, threshing machines and sowing machines.
In 1707 he was invited to visit the silver mines in Harz, Germany, where he presented his idea for a hydraulic machine of a completely new kind based on the idea of removing water from mines gradually, using artificial atmospheric pressure and suction in a vacuum. The principle of this had been known in antiquity but Polhem never completed such a machine.
In 1714 he was appointed Assessor to the Swedish Board of Commerce. He was supported in his ambitions for Swedish industry and the application of science by King Karl XII with whom he discussed projects such as the development of salt boileries on west coast of Sweden and the creation of a great canal across the country.
In 1716 Polhem was appointed Director of the Board of Commerce and was ennobled. He adopted the name Polhem instead of family name of Polhammar and in his coat of arms he incorporated Pythagoras’s theorem.
In 1716 <a supporter was> Swedenborg* was made a commissioner of mines. He was a great supporter of Polhem’s and he founded and funded Sweden’s first scientific journal, “Daedalus hyperboreus” (1716-18), which provided an outlet for many of Polhem’s numerous treatises.
Polhem wrote prolifically on a wide range of subjects, including how to raise children. (He approved of the English philosopher <a fan of> Locke* whose work on education was translated into Swedish in 1709). He had views on theoretical physics and free fall, friction, air resistance, central and centripetal forces, and tried to create a universal language. He wrote articles on the art of building houses, making bricks, on barrel- making and wheel-making, casting bells and building organs.
In 1725 he invented the mangle machine in which a single beam powered two cable cages standing within a reciprocating timber framework. In 1729 he published “A brief account of the most famous mechanical inventions” and in 1739 he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
His scheme for a great canal got underway about 1750 and a new lock was completed in 1755 by his son.
OTHER CONNECTION: None
ONELINER: Christopher Polhem, industrial innovator
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Swedish Insititute, Christopher Polhem, The Swedish Daedalus, National Museum of Science and Technology, Stockholm, 1985