GERMANY 01Saxony and Berlin: The Beginnings of German Machine Tools

Learning from British machines and craftsmen (1798–1847)

Machine tools first took shape in Britain: the screw-cutting lathe, the planer, the shaper, the steam hammer, and standards for true flat surfaces and screw threads. In his 1916 book, the American researcher Roe wrote that in the first half of the 19th century German and French machine tool building lagged one or two generations behind Britain, and that most machines were imported from Britain^[52].

The British export ban and foreign craftsmen

To keep its technology at home, Britain long restricted by law the emigration of craftsmen and the export of machinery. In 1824 manufacturers opposed to lifting the export ban gave evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, and a German technical journal translated and reported it^[6]. This policy ended in 1843^[20].

In the meantime, German factories brought in British technology through people. In Saxony in 1798, a cotton spinning mill and machine workshop were set up at Harthau near Chemnitz, with the Welsh-born mechanic Evan Evans as manager. The first mule-spun yarn in Saxony was spun on machines Evans built. In 1807 Evans set up on his own, building machines for grinding spindles and lathes with slide rests, and spread them to workshops in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge)^[1]. Carl Gottlieb Haubold, who later became the central figure of the Chemnitz machine industry, also learned to build spinning machinery from British craftsmen at this workshop. Haubold opened a factory in Chemnitz in 1826, received an interest-free state loan, toured Britain and France, and by 1836 had turned it into a joint-stock company with 500 workers^[2][8].

Why spinning machinery first? Spinning machinery needs many rollers, spindles and gears of identical shape. Making them required lathes, drilling machines and gear-cutting tools, and so machine workshops grew up. Many Chemnitz machine tool makers began building machine tools as equipment for their own factories making spinning machinery and locomotives, and then started selling them to others as well.

Beuth of Prussia and the “model collection”

In Prussia, the official Peter Beuth gathered technology as a national effort. After becoming head of the Technical Deputation for Trade in 1819, he sent young engineers abroad, held exhibitions and examined inventions, granting patents generally for five years. In 1821 he founded in Berlin the Association for the Promotion of Industry and a technical school (from 1827 the Gewerbeinstitut, or industrial institute), and, slipping past the export bans, collected models of foreign machines, tested them and had copies built^[3]. The locksmith Egells trained in Britain and France with Beuth's backing and opened a machine works in Berlin in 1821. The British machine tools in his works were bought at state expense^[5]. August Borsig, who worked at Egells's works, set up on his own in 1837 and built his first locomotive in 1841^[15].

The schools that trained engineers also came into being around this time. Technical schools were founded in Karlsruhe in 1825 (today's KIT), in Dresden in 1828 (today's TU Dresden) and in Chemnitz in 1836 (today's TU Chemnitz)^[7][9][10]. Redtenbacher, who became a professor at Karlsruhe in 1841, based machine design on calculation and theory and became the model for other technical schools^[17]. The world of craftsmen working by experience and feel was now joined by engineers who had learned design at school, and this later became a hallmark of Germany (Chapter 2).

Reading about Britain in Dingler's journal

Another window was the technical press. The Polytechnisches Journal, founded in 1820 by the Augsburg manufacturer Dingler, ran for 111 years until 1931, and today its full text can be read free of charge^[4]. New British machine tools were quickly introduced in German as well: Nasmyth's patent for a planing machine in 1839^[16], Whitworth's lecture on making true planes by scraping rather than grinding in 1842^[18], Nasmyth's steam hammer in 1843^[19], Whitworth's measuring machine in 1845^[23], and Whitworth's lathe with two tool rests in 1850^[26]. Engineers on the shop floor could study Britain's latest machines through illustrated articles.

The machine tool works of Chemnitz and Loewe of Berlin (1848–1870)

Johann Zimmermann: a factory that built only machine tools

The man called “the father of German machine tool building” is Johann Zimmermann (1820–1901)^[25]. Born in Pápa, Hungary, he learned clock and farm-implement making at a relative's works and in 1839 joined the Sächsische Maschinenbau-Compagnie in Chemnitz. In 1844 he set up on his own with a small works making rollers for spinning machinery, but in the slump of 1848 he gave up the roller business and decided to build only machine tools (lathes and drilling machines first) from then on^[8]. A specialist works that made machine tools themselves its product, rather than a sideline to other machinery, was one of the earliest examples in Germany^[24].

In 1854 he built a new works with galleries and an overhead traveling crane. The 1856 Saxon industrial album called it a “model factory,” with a building more than 350 feet long, steam heating and gas lighting, and reported that with about 250 men and a 30-horsepower steam engine it was building about 20 planers (including a large one about 31 feet long), slotting machines, drilling machines, indexing and milling machines, steam hammers and 36 iron lathes with slide rests. Its customers were German machine works that had been buying British machines until then^[30]. Here, for the first time, domestic machine tools able to replace imports came out in substantial numbers.

Sources differ on the founding year. The figures the company itself gave in 1873 and Matschoss (1925) date his independence to 1844; the TU Chemnitz timeline gives 1848, when he specialized in machine tools; and an 1864 visit report put the works' history as a machine tool factory at “about 8 years” (counting from the new works of 1854)^[21][24][42]. This page distinguishes the two: “independent in 1844, specialized in machine tools in 1848.”

London 1862: alongside Whitworth

It was the 1862 London International Exhibition that made Zimmermann's name known abroad. According to the official list of awards, in the class for machines working wood and metal, Zimmermann received a medal for “a collection of well-made machines” and Hartmann for “a collection of machines for working metal.” Whitworth himself sat on the jury for this class^[38]. The British critic Mallet wrote that Zimmermann's large machine tools ranked with the best in the hall, Whitworth's included, and singled out the large planer for praise. The editors of Dingler's journal, reporting this, proudly added that the works employed not a single foreign engineer, foreman or workman^[41]. Compared with half a century earlier, when Germany depended on British craftsmen, it was a big change.

According to an article on a visit to the works in summer 1863, it had 500–550 workers, its own foundry and forge (with a Naylor steam hammer), and 70 lathes and 55 other machines in the machine shop. It sold to Austria, Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Scandinavia and even the United States^[42]. At the 1867 Paris Exposition it won an award for a gear planing machine that cut the teeth of bevel and spur gears (for the story of gear machines, see Chapter 8)^[44].

Hartmann, Union, Reinecker: the Chemnitz line-up

Also in Chemnitz, Richard Hartmann, a smith from Alsace, started in 1837 with a workshop of three men, built spinning machinery and, from 1848, locomotives, and added machine tool building in 1857. At first the machine tools were for his own works, but he soon sold them to others too. By 1862 it was a large works of more than 1,400 people, and in 1870 it became the joint-stock company “Sächsische Maschinenfabrik”^[12][14][8]. David Gustav Diehl, a toolmaker at Hartmann's works, set up on his own in 1852; his firm became the later Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik Union (strong in horizontal boring machines)^[24][29]. Sondermann & Stier was founded in 1857 as well and had 350 workers by 1873^[21]. Craftsmen left the large works to found the next ones; you can see clearly how Chemnitz became a machine tool town.

Julius Eduard Reinecker, who took over a tool shop and smithy in 1859, began making tools in 1864, and from 1872, taking American machines as his model, built milling machines, grinding machines and relieving lathes (lathes that cut the clearance faces of cutters)^[34][35]. In 1883 Dingler's journal described Reinecker's lathe for relieving the teeth of milling cutters, taps and drills, and in 1885 his patented precision measuring instruments^[67][68]. Unlike Zimmermann with his heavy, large machines, Reinecker came to machine tools from tools and precision measurement.

Loewe in Berlin and Gildemeister in Bielefeld

In Berlin, one man reached machine tools by a completely different road. Ludwig Loewe trained as a merchant, moved to Berlin and started repairing and selling machines. Hearing about new American metalworking, in 1869 he founded Ludwig Loewe & Co. to build household sewing machines. In 1870 he toured the United States with the engineer Barthelmes and, using precise American machine tools, began making sewing machines by the American method of division of labor, mass production and interchangeable parts. He believed the only way to beat imported American sewing machines was to make them the same way^[46][8]. This method, developed at the US armories (the American system), is described in detail in the American Machine Tool Archive, Chapter 1.

In the same year, 1870, Friedrich Gildemeister founded the machine tool works Gildemeister & Comp. in Bielefeld. It is the origin of today's DMG MORI AG^[48]. At the 1880 Düsseldorf industrial exhibition it showed a universal radial drilling machine^[49]. Also in Düsseldorf, Ernst Schiess set up on his own in 1866. An engineer who had studied in Hannover, Karlsruhe and Zurich and worked as a machine tool draftsman in London and Manchester before returning home, he went on to build one of the world's leading makers of large machine tools^[43].

In the south and west, too, future leading names were being born. In Göppingen in 1844 the craftsman Johann Georg Boehringer opened a repair shop for textile mill machinery, and when British textile machinery squeezed him in the 1860s, he shifted his focus to lathes, milling machines and planers^[22]. In Offenbach in 1862, Anton Collet and Otto Engelhard started a works that made almost nothing but machine tools^[39][40].

The founding of the Empire and interchangeable arms production (1871–1875)

Making rifle parts interchangeable

When the German Empire was founded in 1871, the army began to re-equip with a new rifle. The Mauser brothers' rifle, tested at the rifle school in Spandau, became the Empire's standard “Model 71”^[50]. Making hundreds of thousands of rifles so that any part could be exchanged for any other: this was exactly the interchangeable production the US had developed at its armories.

Loewe, who had been struggling to sell sewing machines, found an outlet for mass production here. In 1872 he raised capital in two share issues and signed contracts to supply the Royal Rifle Factory in Spandau with parts for infantry rifles under Mauser's patents^[46]. According to Matschoss, one rifle was broken down into 66 parts and 873 operations^[8]. In 1873, to stop relying on imported American machines, he began building lathes, thread-cutting machines, grinding machines, shapers and planers for his own works^[46]. Around the same time, the American firm Pratt & Whitney won an order worth $350,000 from the German government for arms-making machinery and equipped the arsenals at Spandau, Erfurt and Danzig^[52]. In German arms factories, American special-purpose machines came to stand side by side with domestic machines modeled on them.

What did interchangeable production demand of machine tools? In a craftsman's shop where one machine cut everything, it was enough for a machine to be “universal.” In interchangeable production, where thousands of identical parts must be cut to the same dimensions, you have to provide a dedicated machine and jig for each operation and inspect with limit gauges. Machines needed the rigidity to repeat the same motion without drifting, and devices for turning out quantity without changing the setup (turrets and milling). Loewe went on to grow into a machine tool maker because he had learned these demands first-hand in his own factory.

Vienna 1873: awards, and American milling machines

At the 1873 Vienna World's Fair, the former Zimmermann works (Chemnitzer Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik) and the former Hartmann works (Sächsische Maschinenfabrik) both received the highest award, the Diploma of Honor. In the same group were Sellers of Philadelphia and Sharp, Stewart of Manchester^[51][53]. By the end of 1872 the former Zimmermann works had delivered about 11,000 machine tools; its workforce had grown from 150 in 1858 to 1,050 in 1872, and 375 machine tools, including 170 lathes and 80 planers, ran in the works on eight steam engines^[21].

Engineers who looked closely, however, were harsh. Among lathes, Sellers's leadscrew lathe was judged clearly the best^[55], and Ernst Hartig of Dresden, who wrote the machine tool section of the German government's official report, wrote that careful workmanship in milling machines was seen almost only among the American exhibitors. Collet & Engelhard of Offenbach also showed a vertical milling machine, but in milling machines for cutting mass-produced parts the US was ahead^[54].

“Measuring and comparing” machine tools

Hartig had studied at the Chemnitz technical school and the Dresden polytechnic, worked at Hartmann's works and became a professor in Dresden in 1865. He built a recording dynamometer to measure the power machines consume^[11]. In 1874 he published the results of experiments measuring the work done and the power consumed by machine tools^[57]. This attitude of comparing machines not by “looks” or “reputation” but by the numbers became the foundation, 30 years later, when Schlesinger set up a machine tool laboratory in Berlin (Chapter 2).

The “cheap and nasty” criticism and the comeback (1876–1890)

Reuleaux's letters from Philadelphia

In 1876, Franz Reuleaux, director of the Gewerbeakademie in Berlin (forerunner of the technical university), was sent as a German juror to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, marking 100 years of American independence. Reuleaux was a scholar known worldwide for kinematics (the theory of machine motion) and had seen the London, Paris and Vienna exhibitions^[61][27]. The letters he sent from the fair to a Berlin newspaper were later collected in a book, Briefe aus Philadelphia (Letters from Philadelphia, 1877)^[60].

In his first letter, dated June 2, Reuleaux summed up the criticism of the German exhibits as saying that “the principle of German industry is billig und schlecht (cheap and bad),” and admitted that on average this was true. He also wrote that the German section was dominated by artworks on patriotic themes and Krupp's giant cannon^[60]. The letter appeared in the newspaper on June 27 and set off weeks of controversy in Germany. British papers rendered it as “cheap and nasty,” and newspapers in London and New York reported it^[61]. In his third letter, dated July 19, he restated his point: a trade that competes on price alone produces “cheap, and therefore bad”^[60].

In machine tools, America led

Reuleaux wrote about machine tools in his fourth letter, dated July 31. He acknowledged that the US led in machine tool building, not only at this fair but probably overall, citing new practical ideas, skillful adaptation to particular jobs, and rising precision and finish. And he argued that Germany, having adopted and developed the British types, was at the point where a distinctly German type of machine tool was beginning to emerge, but that since the American type had overtaken the British, Germany should adopt the new methods without hesitation^[60]. Dingler's correspondent likewise wrote that American machine tools, when required, matched the finish of Europe's best, and named the universal milling machines of Sellers, Pratt & Whitney, Brown & Sharpe and Brainard^[58][59]. The age of the American specialist makers is covered in the American Machine Tool Archive, Chapter 2.

The patent law, and graduating from copying

In 1877, the year after the criticism, the German Empire's patent law was enacted on May 25, and the Imperial Patent Office began work in Berlin on July 1^[62][63]. Until then, patent systems differed from state to state in Germany, and it was hard to stop people copying others' inventions. Reuleaux, together with Werner von Siemens, had pushed for the law^[27]. Of the Patent Office's seven divisions, two dealt only with mechanical technology^[64], and in the first year and a half there were 9,194 applications and 4,390 patents. By region, the Kingdom of Saxony came third, after Berlin and the Rhine Province^[65]. Machine tool makers began taking out patents too. Wohlenberg of Hannover, for example, patented a lathe headstock in 1881 (DRP 16474)^[66].

The comeback: machine tools built for stock, and specialist makers

Loewe had chosen the opposite path from the criticism early on. According to the NDB, Loewe refused to make poor goods cheaply and set out to build the firm's reputation on quality and precision. With this policy he came through the depression that began in 1873 (the Gründerkrach, or “founders' crash”) without cutting staff^[46]. After handling large arms orders from Germany and Russia in 1877–83, he returned to machine tools, supplying complete factory equipment in 1880 and even taking orders from the United States. He built machine tools in batches for stock without waiting for orders, lowering prices and shortening delivery times^[46][8]. Machine tools, normally built one at a time to order, were now mass-produced with interchangeable parts: he had applied what he learned in his own arms factory to machine tools themselves. The NDB credits Ludwig Loewe with showing German machine tool building the American model^[46].

In Chemnitz too, Reinecker grew into a specialist maker of tools and precision measurement and in 1891 moved to a new works in Gablenz (226 workers, 211 machine tools). At the 1893 Chicago World's Fair it was the only German machine tool maker to exhibit^[34]. In 1889 Wilhelm von Pittler founded “Maschinenfabrik Invention” in Leipzig and in 1890 brought out a machine with a turret^[74][75]. In 1885 Wanderer, a bicycle maker that later turned to milling machines, was also born in Chemnitz^[69]. Schiess for large machines, Pittler for turret lathes, Reinecker for tools and measurement: this was the period when firms changed from machine works that built everything to specialist makers with machine types of their own.

In arms, Loewe bought a majority of Mauser's shares in 1887 and built part of an order from Turkey for 500,000 repeating rifles in Berlin^[71]. In 1896 Ludwig's brother Isidor combined the arms division, Mauser and others into Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM), and Loewe remained a machine tool maker. In 1896–98 it built a new works for interchangeable production in Moabit, Berlin, bringing in American engineers^[70].

What it means on the shop floor. The story of this era carries through to today's factories: interchangeable production inspected with dedicated jigs and limit gauges; mass production that builds in batches ahead of orders; the idea of measuring and comparing machine performance by numbers; and protecting your own ideas with patents. German machine tool building acquired all of these as it escaped “cheap and nasty.” If the nameplate of a used German machine carries a “DRP” (Deutsches Reichspatent, German Imperial Patent) number, the year of that patent tells you roughly when the design dates from.

What came next

In 1891 the machine tool makers' association VDW (German Machine Tool Builders' Association) was formed, and in 1904 a chair of machine tools was created at the technical university in Berlin. In 1900 Dingler's journal looked back on Reuleaux's “cheap and nasty” as the starting point of German mechanical engineering and, while acknowledging the efforts made since, warned of the spread of American-style machine tools^[77]. The story of the era when German machine tools set out to overtake the American model through “science” continues in Chapter 2, “Production Engineering as a Science”.

⛩Links with Japan

In the period of this chapter, Japan had not yet begun building machine tools. Japanese machine tools began with machines that the shipyards at Nagasaki and Yokosuka bought from the Netherlands and France (Japanese Archive, Chapter 1). Among them is one link with Germany. The nameplate of a French machine tool bought by the Yokosuka shipyard in 1867 was engraved “Mulhouse 1866”^[45]. Mulhouse was a machine-building town in Alsace that became German territory after the Franco-Prussian War, in 1871. At the 1873 Vienna World's Fair, the Mulhouse machine tool maker Heilmann, Ducommun & Steinlen, exhibiting as a German firm, received a Diploma of Honor^[53]. The records do not say which company built the Yokosuka machine, but it means that the place Japan got its first machine tools from later became one of Germany's machine tool centers.

The world's fairs were another point of contact. At the 1873 Vienna World's Fair, the first in which the Japanese government took part, Gottfried Wagener, a German teaching in Tokyo, helped Sano Tsunetami with the preparations, setting up the Japanese pavilion and editing its catalog. Wagener also wrote part of the catalog of Japanese exhibits for the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition and advised on industrial promotion at the Industrial Promotion Bureau of the Home Ministry^[56]. In Philadelphia, Reuleaux wrote that visitors entering the Main Building were drawn first to the Chinese and Japanese displays, and noted that the Japanese display was richer than at Vienna and that manufacturers exhibited under their own names^[60]. The Japanese participants have been documented in research^[81].

Reuleaux's scholarship itself also reached Japan. Around 1900 Kyoto Imperial University imported 19 of Reuleaux's kinematic models made by Gustav Voigt of Berlin, among other items, and they remain at Kyoto University today^[76]. Reuleaux's way of teaching machine motion with models was used in mechanical engineering education in Meiji Japan as well. Japanese machine tool makers took German machines as models only in the 20th century, in the era of hobbing machines (Pfauter machines from Germany were imported around 1906) and VDF lathes (1930s) (Chapter 2; in the Japanese archive, the gear cutting machine chapter, lathe chapter).

FAQ

Why is Johann Zimmermann called “the father of German machine tool building”?

Because he was the first in Germany to build up a large specialist works that made and sold only machine tools, rather than as a sideline to other machinery. He specialized in machine tools in Chemnitz in 1848; by 1856 about 250 men were building planers, lathes, drilling machines and more, which he sold to German factories that had been buying British machines. At the 1862 London Exhibition his machines were judged to rank with Whitworth's, and by the end of 1872 he had delivered about 11,000 machines.

Was “billig und schlecht” (cheap and nasty) said about machine tools?

No. It was a verdict on the German exhibits as a whole at the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition. In a letter to a newspaper, the juror Reuleaux wrote that German industry was accused of being “cheap and bad” and admitted that on average this was accurate. On machine tools, he wrote in another letter that the US led and that Germany should adopt the new American methods at once.

Were German machine tools copies of British and American ones?

At the start, yes. In the first half of the 19th century Germany copied British machines and craftsmen, and from the 1870s Loewe and Reinecker took American machines and interchangeable production as their model. But in 1862 Zimmermann's large machines were judged to rank with Whitworth's, and in 1876 Reuleaux wrote that “a German type was beginning to emerge.” After the 1877 patent law, makers began protecting their own ideas with patents.

Where can I see German machine tools of this era?

The Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin shows a factory of around 1900 running on overhead line shafting and has Whitworth's 1860 lathe. The Industriemuseum in Chemnitz is a museum housed in the buildings of a machine tool maker's works. The machine tool exhibition at the Deutsches Museum in München is closed for renovation (reopening planned for around 2028).