Robert Zahn (12 March 1861 in
Münchberg
Münchberg is a small town in Upper Franconia (Bavaria), Germany. It is sometimes referred to as the ''Textile Town of Bavaria''.
Its sister city is Jefferson City, Missouri
Jefferson City, informally Jeff City, is the capital of Missouri, ...
– 21 January 1914 in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
) was a German engineer and industrialist. Zahn started designing
embroidery
Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen ...
machines. As the director of the ''Vogtländische Maschinenfabrik (VOMAG)'' at a later stage, he played a major role in the technical perfection of the machines being produced there. The Plauen firm became one of the leading public limited companies in the engineering sector in Germany under his leadership.
Life
Zahn was born as the son of Christian Karl Zahn and his wife Johanna Louise (née Jahreis). He attended school in Münchberg and later went to the vocational college in
Hof, Bavaria
Hof () is a town on the banks of the Saale in the northeastern corner of the German state of Bavaria, in the Franconian region, at the Czech border and the forested Fichtelgebirge and Frankenwald upland regions.
The town has 47,296 inhabitants, ...
. He started a course at the
Technicum Mittweida in 1876, but did not complete his studies. He found work as a technician at the Stickmaschinenfabrik Kappel in 1882. He gained a fundamental knowledge of engineering there. However, he saw better opportunities of promotion at the Hilscher knitting and embroidery machine factory and moved to this company in 1894. Working with Max Hilscher, he registered his first two German patents in 1895. But he had already moved to
Plauen
Plauen (; Czech: ''Plavno'') is, with around 65,000 inhabitants, the fifth-largest city of Saxony, Germany after Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz and Zwickau, the second-largest city of the Vogtland after Gera, as well as the largest city in the Sa ...
to work at the ''Vogtländische Maschinenfabrik (VOMAG)'' in the following year. Following a three-year period in what was the world’s largest automated embroidery factory, Feldmühle AG in
Rorschach Rorschach may refer to:
* Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist
** Rorschach test, his psychological evaluation method involving inkblots
* Rorschach (character), a character from the comics ''Watchmen''
* Rorschach (comic book), a 2020 comic
* ...
in Switzerland, he returned to Plauen in 1900. VOMAG gave the gifted design engineer the creative freedom to boost his successful career. In 1904, when Zahn was already the deputy director of VOMAG, the supervisory board appointed him as the sole managing director. His many business trips not only generated orders, but also provided inspiration for improvements to VOMAG machines. Under his leadership, the company continued to expand its embroidery machines and web-fed printing press divisions.
Zahn was married to Luise Seidel in his first marriage. This marriage was dissolved in 1913. He then married his long-standing friend Paula Grabner in December in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. The two relationships produced four children: Hans, Friedrich, Walter and Erna. Zahn died very unexpectedly after an operation on his intestines in a Leipzig hospital on 21 January 1914. He was buried at the
Leipziger Südfriedhof.
Achievements
As a result of his work as a design engineer at the Kappel embroidery machine factory, Zahn was familiar with the technology of a shuttle embroidery machine operating according to the system introduced by Isaac Gröbli. During his time in Switzerland, he had got to know the further development work to produce automatic embroidery machines with a
jacquard loom
The Jacquard machine () is a device fitted to a loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelassé. The resulting ensemble of the loom and Jacquard machine is then called a J ...
mechanism, which were controlled using a
punched tape
Five- and eight-hole punched paper tape
Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle – creating a physical program loop
Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage ...
. At that time, the automatic machines were made in line with the patents of J. Arnold Gröbli, a son of Isaak Gröbli and brother of the mathematician
Walter Gröbli
Walter Gröbli (1852–1903) was a Swiss mathematician.
Life and work
His father, Issak Gröbli, was an industrial who was invented a shuttle embroidery machine in 1863, and his old brother is credited to have introduced the invention in the ...
, by Kursheedt Manufacturing Co. in the USA for the automated embroidery factory in Rorschach. As Zahn had successfully worked on optimising the Gröbli automatic embroidery machines in Switzerland, an exclusive licensing deal was signed between Feldmühle AG in Rorschach and VOMAG in Plauen in 1900 to manufacture automatic embroidery machines. This marked the start of the Plauen engineering company’s rise to become the world’s largest producer of embroidery machines.
At Zahn’s suggestion and in line with his outline sketches, a design team improved the Gröbli automatic machines with an associated
embroidery punch machine in 1908. After the expiry of existing patents and licenses, VOMAG supplied a technically advanced automatic embroidery machine, which had been developed in-house, starting in 1910. The machine was marketed very successfully as the “Zahn system” and 2,000 of these machines were sold around the world in just 3 years.
As an engineer, manager and director of VOMAG from 1904 onwards, Zahn had a major influence on the future direction of the Vogtland engineering company. Under his leadership, the firm perfected the construction of
rotary printing press, a process started in 1899. VOMAG equipped the
B.Z. am Mittag tabloid newspaper with what were the largest and fastest rotary printing presses at that time in 1908. The company presented the world’s first
web-fed offset printing press.
[Andreas Krone, Heino Strobel: ''Großauftrag für Berlin''. In: Historikus, Heft 3, 2014, Hrsg. PbK, S. 8] in 1912. The company also considered making trucks, but this only started in 1915.
Honours
Münchberg honoured its important son with an information board on the house of his birth in 2015. The city of Plauen has named a street after Robert Zahn. The
Embroidery Machine Museum, Plauen, also promotes the memory of Robert Zahn. There is still a working model that uses Zahn system there.
References
* Vogtländischer Anzeiger und Tageblatt vom 22. Januar 1914, ''Direktor Robert Zahn (Nachruf)''
* Willy Erhardt: ''Das Glück auf der Nadelspitze'', Vogtland-Verlag Plauen 1995, S. 123-133
* Heino Strobel, Andreas Krone: ''Manager im Weltmaßstab.'' In: Historikus, Heft 1, 2014, Hrsg. PbK, S. 9-12
External links
Berühmte Münchberger Retrieved 17 November 2015.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zahn, Robert
1861 births
1914 deaths
Engineers from Bavaria
People from the Province of Saxony