Julius Pintsch

Born in Berlin, Pintsch completed an apprenticeship as a tinsmith in 1833 and, after his Wanderjahre, took up a position at a local lamp factory. Having obtained his Meister certificate, he established his own small workshop near the municipal gasworks at Frankfurter Bahnhof in Berlin-Friedrichshain, in 1843. While the City of Berlin continuously enlarged its gas network in order to supply the growing population, Pintsch received numerous repair orders from the public GASAG utility company. He achieved major success in 1847 with the development of a reliable gas meter that was used by the city administration and would eventually be used worldwide. In 1851, he created a gas lamp that was suitable for use in railroad cars. The lamps were illuminated by Pintsch gas, a long-burning oil gas that would remain lit during the rough motion of train journeys. Pintsch gas was essentially purified, compressed gas distilled from naphtha, that was regulated and reduced to ounce per square inch of pressure to the burner. Pintsch gas was later replaced by an improved Blau gas for railroad car usage. Starting in 1863, Pintsch had a large factory built on Andreasstrasse in Berlin, followed by subsidiaries in Dresden, Breslau, Frankfurt, Utrecht and Fürstenwalde. Those plants designed and constructed a wide range of gas-related devices including gas meters, gas pressure regulators, and gas analyzers. After his death in 1884 in Fürstenwalde, his sons Richard, Oskar, Julius Karl, and Albert inherited the business and became successful in the manufacture of compressed Pintsch gas for use in beacons and unmanned lighthouses. Products included gas mantle lamps, as well as light buoys used in the Kronstadt Bay and the Suez Canal. In 1907, the business was transformed into a public limited company (AG). Some branches were later acquired by the Schaltbau GmbH Munich. == Pintsch gas ==

Pintsch gas was a compressed fuel gas invented by Pintsch, which was derived from distilled naphtha and used for illumination purposes during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its primary use in the latter half of the 19th century was for illumination of buoys, isolated beacons, lighthouses and railroad cars. Railway carriages Pintsch gas was first applied to the illumination of railway carriages on the Lower Silesian Railway in Germany in 1871. The system was successfully trialled in 1874 on the London and North Western Railway for its Irish Mail service: one tank of compressed gas in each carriage would provide for two Euston-to-Holyhead return journeys. Its use was then taken up by many other railway companies in England. By 1888, some 23,500 railway carriages across Europe and the US were lit on Pintsch's system, of which just under 15,000 were in Germany. Lamps using Pintsch gas burned brighter and longer than the oil lamps they replaced and could withstand vibration and rough usage without the light being extinguished. That was followed by the Suez Canal Company, which installed 59 buoys and 39 beacons lit using Pintch's system, to enable the canal to be navigable by night as well as by day. The buoys held compressed gas sufficient for two months' constant illumination between refills. Electric light and railway technology Early in the twentieth century, Pintsch AG diversified its interests in lighting to include filaments for electric lighting, to electric lighting systems, and decorative neon lighting; and on the railway side to include level crossing signals and electro-mechanical interlocking systems. ==References==