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 oseph Ludwig Franz
(or Josef Ludvik František) Ressel was born in Austria on 29 June 1793 in the
east Bohemian town of Chundrum (now Chrudim), east of the present Czech
Republic. His mother was Marija Ana Ressel (born Konvichkova), a Czech, and his
father Anton Hermann Ressel, a German.
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Inventor and forester born in Chrudim, Austria-Hungary 1793 |
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He was baptised the day after his birth in the Church of the Redeemer. Josef's elder brother Franc Vojteh (born in 1791) would become a priest, while his sister Viktorija (born in 1795) would die in childhood. His youngest sister Marija Terezija was born in 1797. The family was constantly struggling with poverty. His father was a toll collector and a tax inspector in two local breweries, and an excellent violin player as well. Josef's first school was the local parish school, and his first violin teacher was his father's friend Regenschori Rykl. A former Franciscan, Donulus Kora taught him Latin, and in 1806 Ressel left Chrudim and entered grammar school in Linz. In 1809 he began a two-year study of artillery at the 4th artillery regiment in Ceské Budejovice (Budweis) where he acquired an outstanding knowledge of mathematics, geometry and technical drawing. Although he was a good student, he would not be admitted to the army because he was considered too weak. In the years 1812-14, he attended the University of Vienna, aspiring to study medicine. However, he studied state accountancy, chemistry, veterinary medicine, agriculture, forestry, hydraulics, architecture, and natural sciences. His parents became unable to support Josef, so he made an effort to support himself and his parents with drawings and calligraphy, but had to leave the university in 1814. He had an opportunity to continue his studies at the newly founded Forestry Academy at Mariabrunn near Vienna. Following his father's advice, Josef asked the Academy for a grant, but was refused because "his lungs were too weak". His friend Jelinek, who was a servant at Court, gave Emperor Franz I a miniature of Ressel's, which represented the Battle at Leipzig in 1813. The Emperor appreciated the miniature, and paid Ressel a sum that allowed him to enroll for the two-year studies at the Forestry Academy. Josef Ressel's drawings and calligraphy supported his family until 1817, when he was appointed district forester in Pleterje. He later worked as a forester in Motovun, then in Trieste (1821-1835) and Ljubljana. In 1839 he went into navy service in Venice, and from 1852 was a Naval Forestry official. He married Jakomina (Giacomina) Orebich from Motovun (Montona), Istria in 1821. After 1838 he was in charge of growing and collecting the wood for the ship-building industry. Giacomina having died, Ressel remarried in 1830 to Tereza Kastelec from Vishnja gora. On October 9, 1857, Ressel succumbed to malaria in Ljubljana (then Laibach) while there on a service-connected trip. He was buried in that town, having passed away without ever having received the least acknowledgement for his famous invention. Inventions and Patents At his new job as forester he came up with many gimmicks, for instance how to measure areas of woods quickly and reliably. Ressel was the author of more than 30 technical inventions - for which he was granted ten patents - including for a ball and cylinder bearing (ball-bearing without oiling), a press-roller for oil and wine, a rolling mill and steam engine with air cooling, a pneumatic post, and a method for the production of soap, to name just a few. The job instigated an interest in sea navigation in the young man, as his duty was to care for wood from deforesting to the building of sea ships. The beginning of the 19th century in Slovenia was marked by the introduction of steam power. In 1818, the first steamship sailed from Trieste to Venice. In 1819, the first industrial steam engine was set up in Trieste, followed by the first steam engine in Ljubljana in 1835. Soon after, steam power was used for the first time in the Idrija mine. The introduction of steam power reached its peak in Slovenia in 1849 and 1857, when the railway line from Vienna reached Ljubljana and Trieste respectively.
In the years that followed his patent, he was involved with screw propeller experiments, and he tried to establish a regular line for the transport of passengers between Trieste and Venice. In the autumn of 1829, Ressel became the first person in the world to use a screw propeller in civil navigation. He modified a small steam-powered boat "Civetta" (or Civeta) and fitted it with a screw propeller, then test-drove it in the Trieste harbor. With about 40 passengers on board, he sailed over the Gulf of Trieste moving at six knots and reached over a half a sea mile before a soldered connection gave way and the steam conduits exploded, leaving passengers screaming and shouting amidst clouds of smoke and steam. Because of this misfortune, police authorities banned any further experiments. Ressel then focused on other technical projects, but he never abandoned the idea of the screw propeller which he developed further in the following decades. The screw-propeller (as opposed to paddle-wheels) was introduced in the latter half of the 18th century. David Bushnell's invention of the submarine (the Turtle) in 1775 utilized hand-powered screws for vertical and horizontal propulsion. Ressel's screw propeller, patented in 1927, was the first to place the propeller between the helm and the stern so that the propeller worked under the water, thus making it most efficient. But Ressel's authorship of the invention was put in doubt due to inertia of the Austrian Presidium of Imperial Sciences. In a suspicious coincidence in 1836, Englishman Francis Petit Smith tested a screw propeller that was similar to Ressel's. It is believed now that someone might have secretly sold Ressel's invention to Great Britain. In 1839, a Swedish engineer, John Ericsson introduced the screw-propeller design onto a ship which then sailed over the Atlantic Ocean in 40 days. Mixed paddle and propeller designs were still being used at this time (vide the 1858 SS Great Eastern). Ressel's steamship "Civetta" did, however, sail several years before either Ericsson or Smith even proposed their model of the screw propeller, and yet they are named as the inventors in certain encyclopedieas. In 1865, at its arbitrary session, the National Academy in Washington decided the matter in Ressel's favour. In any case, the propeller screw design was stabilized in the 1880s. Many of Ressel's inventions did not, however, serve the needs of the time, as Austria was so distant from the centres of industrial development. Thus, it was not his activity with inventions and navigation, that marks Ressel's role in the Austrian navy, but his professional service as a forester.
Reforestation of the Karst region Austrian pine today grows in a large part of western Slovenia, called the Karst, which extends between the Bay of Trieste and the Vipava valley, thanks in part to Josef Ressel. This part of Slovenia had been covered with deciduous forests (oak) which were destroyed by logging, burning and pasturing. A series of droughts and poor harvests in the first decades of the 19th century induced Emperor Franz I to abolish reserves of private woods and to allow the export of wood. Wood traders benefited considerably from this measure, and the French and English navies bought large quantities of good wood from Friuli and Istria.
His reforestation programme did not only consider the technical side of the problem. He believed that the local administrations should take responsibility for reducing poverty and that a promotional campaign was needed to convince farmers of the necessity of reforestation and its positive effect on the harvests. He insisted that the penalty for stealing wood should not be too high, and that grazing should be allowed in the forests. If peasants were able to find wood for fire and construction of houses, there would have been less theft of the high quality wood that was intended for shipbuilding. Ressel's forestry suggestions were not often appreciated by authorities, although he contributed greatly to providing wood for dockyards, and had a rational approach to forest management. His programmes were an early stage of modern regional planning, taking into consideration the complex economic interrelations. They are the first systematic professional approach to re-establishing the woods and improving the landscape of Istria and the Karst with local participation. Considering the prospective growth of the Austrian navy, the measures he introduced into forestry helped preserve the precious forests in a way that would satisfy even today's environmental standards.
Statues and Dedications In "Josef Ressel: ein gemeinsamer 'lieu de mémoire' Mitteleuropas?," Ernst Bruckmüller discusses the claims made by three groups - Austro-German, Czech, and Slovenian speakers - to Ressel (1793-1857), a Habsburg civil servant and inventor. The son of a German-speaking father and Czech-speaking mother, Ressel was born in Bohemia, and educated there and in Vienna. Ressel, who had knowledge of Italian and Slovene, spent much of his career in Istria and Slovenia where, as a forest administrator, he was also responsible for surveying forests and improving agricultural production. After plans to honor Ressel posthumously with a statue in Trieste fell through (but there is one there today), one was instead unveiled in 1863 before the Technical University in Vienna, where it stands today in Ressel Park. The Latin-language inscription honored the "Austrian" Ressel as the inventor of the ship propeller. "This statue of Ressel worked well in mid-nineteenth-century Vienna: the unitary and theoretically transnational state urgently needed transnational heroes, who could have an integrative effect beyond a particular language group." Ressel would also be honored with a memorial tablet in his birthplace and with streets named for him in Laibach (now Ljubljana), Prague, and Vienna. A statue of Ressel was also unveiled in Chrudim, Czechoslovakia in 1924, and stands in front of the County Museum in the square that was named after him. A bronze bust of Ressel by Antonin Popp (1901) is also placed on brackets on either a wall or on a hermae in the Pantheon of the National Museum in Prague.
On 7 June 2005 was inaugurated the "Josef Ressel" footpath in the Igouza wood, near Basovizza (Trieste). The footpath, equipped for blind people, has been co-financed by the Programme Interreg IIIA Italy-Slovenia. The following currency and postage stamps have also been issued in Ressel's honor:
Ressel is best known for his main invention, the ship screw propeller, that he patented in 1827 and tested on the ship "Civetta" in the Gulf of Trieste, 1829. As a forester, he introduced significant improvements in forestry and conservation to the Karst region and Istria, working in Montona (now Motovun) and Trieste. Sources:
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| This page is compliments of Marisa Ciceran and Guido Villa Created: Tuesday, June 21,
2005; Last Updated:
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
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Among
many other inventions, Ressel became famous for his revolutionary invention of
the screw propeller that was to change maritime navigation. He
The
devastation of forest areas thus contributed to a change of climate and
subsequent bad harvests. The earth began eroding and the cultural landscape
deteriorated. Some more progressive foresters
began contemplating reforestation, and Ressel was among them. He
carried out a reforestation programme and suggested a purchase reserve. He
developed a procedure for conservation of wood to be used in shipbuilding, and
insisted that more iron parts should be used instead of wood. 
When we consider Ressel's contribution to world technology, we
should take into consideration the environment he worked in. Living in
southern Austria, to which only the industrial revolution opened the
passage to the outer world, a country where the railway had not reached
all regions, where there were no important cultural centres with big
libraries, etc. Ressel was a remarkably modern thinker, interested in saving
energy and raw materials. By 1895 and up to 1914 almost 110,000 hectares of the
Karst were covered with forests of Austrian pine. This was an extensive and
arduous project which involved bringing earth to the planting sites in wicker
baskets. In the challenging weather and soil conditions of that area the
Austrian pine rewarded their efforts, and today forms a large portion of the
Karst forests. 
