Georg von Arco
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Georg Wilhelm Alexander Hans Graf von Arco (August 30, 1869 – May 5, 1940) was a German physicist, radio pioneer, and one of the joint founders of the Telefunken company, which was called "Society for Wireless Telegraphy" at that time. By trade, he was an engineer and the technical director of Telefunken. He was crucial in the development of wireless technology in Europe.
Arco served for a time as an assistant to Adolf Slaby, who was close to William II, German Emperor. Until 1930, the responsibilities of Arco were as one of the two managing directors of the society for its scientific-technologic range and he participated in the development of high performance tube transmitters. Together with his teacher, Slaby, he was considerably involved in the study and development of high-frequency engineering in Germany. He was a Monist and a pacifist. Between 1921-22, he was a chairman of the German Monist Federation.
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[edit] Early years
Arco was born on the family estate of his father, Count Alexander Karl von Arco, in Gorzyce, Upper Silesia (today Poland). He was interested already as a child in machines of all kinds, but after his Abitur in the Breslauer Maria Magdalenen High School (1889), however, he did not study engineering sciences, but attended mathematical and physical lectures at the University of Berlin and afterwards took up an officer career. For his father it was natural that the members of his family became either farmers or officers. After three years with the military, however, his life changed, in order to study from mechanical engineering and electro-technology in the TH Charlottenburg from 1893. There he became acquainted with Professor Adolf Slaby, the only foreigner who was allowed to participate in Guglielmo Marconi's transmission experiments on the coast of the English Channel.
Building on these attempts, Arco and Slaby in the summer of 1897 used the bell tower of the Church of the Redeemer, Sacrow, as an antenna, to verify and understand Marconi's experiments. Here the first German antenna system for wireless telegraphy was established. On 27 August a signal transmission to the imperial naval base, Kongsnaes, 1.6 kilometers away in Potsdam's Schwanenallee on the opposite bank of the Jungfernsee was successful.
In 1928 a plaque, created by Hermann Hosaeus, was fixed over the door of the campanile to commemorate to this attempt. In the centre of the plaque, which is made from green dolomite, is Atlas with the globe, surrounded by lightning and the text: "At this place in 1897 Professor Adolf Slaby and Count von Arco erected the first German antenna system for wireless communication".
On 7 October 1897, the first radio link from Berlin Schöneberg to Rangsdorf was successful, and the following summer Jüterbog, approximately 60 kilometres away, could be reached.
[edit] AEG
In 1898, at the end of his study, Arco went to work as an engineer at the Kabelwerk Oberspree plant of AEG. At first Arco was responsible as a laboratory engineer for testing various cable types but was able however, through continued contact with Slaby, to introduce and develop wireless telegraphy at AEG.
[edit] Telefunken
Patent disputes between Siemens and AEG resulted in both companies, at the behest of William II, German Emperor, founding a common enterprise based, the Society for Wireless Telegraphy Ltd. The company's telegraph address, Telefunken, became in the course of the time the company name. Arco was able, particularly in the early days of the technology, to greatly increase the power and range of the transmitters. In this regard he surpassed the Löschfunkensender of Max Wien, which had already exhibited a substantially better efficiency than the Knallfunkensender of Ferdinand Braun, and in addition could send on a narrow frequency band.
[edit] Nauen Radio Station
Arco's greatest service lay in the development of the large radio station, Nauen, thereby helping Telefunken to become a firm of world-wide reputation. In 1909 he equipped it with a Löschfunksender, with which Nauen changed from being a research station into a station with regular radio traffic. Now contact could be made with the African colonies and the naval warfare fleet. A decade later, in 1918, the transmitting power had increased tenfold with a completely new transmitter technology introduced in 1912, a high frequency machine transmitter with magnetic frequency converter. This permitted, for the first time, the production of scarcely diminished waves with high power. This development was due to the substantial involvement of Arco. It stimulated electron tubes experiments.
[edit] Philosophical and ideological activities
While Slaby exerted himself for the university, Arco pursued philosophical activities. He associated himself with the Monist movement and the Berlin Circle for Empirical Philosophy, as well as the pacifist movement during the First World War as founding member and chairman of the Bund Neues Vaterlands. He belonged to the German Monisten League, whose chairman he was from 1921 to 1922. In 1923 he was joint founder of the Society of Friends of New Russia, because of which he celebrated his 60th birthday in Moscow, which was unusual for someone in his position.
He was an advisory member of the Abraham Lincoln Foundation, a German branch of the Rockefeller Foundation.
[edit] Death and afterwards
After his death, Arco was accorded the honour of a civic funeral from Berlin. The tended grave is in the enormous cemetery, Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf. The senate had a memorial plaque erected at Albrechtstrasse 49/50 in the Mariendorf area of Tempelhof. In Charlottenburg, Havelstrasse was renamed Arcostrasse in 1950, in memory of this pioneer of radio engineering. Also in Nauen, where Telefunken has had a working transmission station since the beginning of the 20th century, there is another road named after him.
The town of Arco, Idaho, was named after him in 1903.
[edit] Notes
Regarding personal names: Graf is a title, translated as Count, not a first or middle name. The female form is Gräfin.
[edit] Publications
- Margot Fuchs: Georg von Arco (1869-1940) - Ingenieur, Pazifist, Technischer Direktor von Telefunken. Diepholz/Berlin: GNT Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3-928186-70-4.
