what every happened to that "Z..........boat" he was developing? I think
that it was powered by a Wankel and if I remember correctly had hydrofoils.
----- Original Message -----
From: "ACRE" <rotaryeng@earthlink.net>
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 1:05 PM
Subject: Felix Wankel
"Lemings, Bob" wrote:
Paul,
More Felix Wankel Stuff:
Inventor and Developer of the Practical Rotary Combustion Engine -
Wankel RCE ?E
1921: Finished formal education (high school) age 19. ?E
1933: Applied for patent on a DKM engine. ?E
1936: Received patent. ?E
1951: Collaboration with NSU and Walter Froede. ?E
1957: DKM engine runs. ?E
1958: KKM engine runs. ?E
1969: Honorary Doctorate from Technische Universitat Munchen.
Felix Wankel was born August 13, 1902 at Schillerstrasse 11 (4?) in Lahr
in the Black Forest in Swabia in Germany (Otto, Daimler, and Benz also came
from Swabia). He was the only child of Rudolf Wankel (1867-1914), a senior
forestry official (Grossh. Bad. Oberfoerster, Forstassessor, Forstbeamten),
and Martha Gertrud (Gerty) Heidlauff (1879-?). His father was killed in
August 1914 by schrapnel at Dornach (Elsass (Alsace?)) in World War I as an
Oberleutnant. Early Work Wankel went to Unterprima High School, but he
graduated from high school at the age of 19. Although the poverty of his
family (widowed mother in postwar Germany) meant he had to go to work and
could not apprentice or follow further full-time studies, he gained academic
recognition within his own time. His first job was in 1921, printing,
stocking, and apprenticing in sales for a scientific book publisher in
Heidelberg, but Wankel devoted his energy to tinkering, especially after
losing the sales job in 1924 in the German Depression.
He opened his own workshop that year in Heidelberg. Felix Wankel conceived
the idea of a rotary engine in 1924. Wankel's first attempt to obtain a
patent was in
1926 for a "grease turbine", but it was predated by an Enke design from
1886. In 1927 he made drawings of the shape of the "drehkolbenmaschine
without uneven
moved sections" or rotary piston engine and of sealing parts.
He received his first patent in 1929 (DRP 507 584). He would continue to
be issued patents for six decades. In 1933 he applied for a patent for a DKM
engine,
which he received in 1936. Like many middle class Germans of his time,
ruined by the runaway inflation of the 1920's, Wankel had been attracted by
the political
and economic philosophies of national socialism. As a young man he was a
member of the Hitler Youth (where he met his wife, Emmy Kirn) and then a
member of the
NSDAP party. He resigned from it in 1932 which was the right idea, but
there was no best time to do so, because in 1933 the Nazis came into power.
This lead to
conflict because Wankel had exposed some corruption by the provincial
chief (Gauleiter) Wagner. He was arrested and held in prison by the Nazis
for some months
in Lahr until an industrialist and an engineer intervened on his behalf.
By 1936 he had resettled in the Lindau Bodensee area. In the following
years, Wankel mostly made his way by ingenious work on rotary valves and
sealing
technology for Lilienthal, BMW, DVL, Junker, and Daimler-Benz. During this
time he developed various DKM prototypes and also rotary pumps and
compressors. When
the French army invaded in 1945, his workshops and research were
dismantled (destroyed) by the French and he was imprisoned until 1946.
Collaboration with NSU
During the Allied occupation, Felix Wankel began secretly writing his book
on the organization of rotary piston engines.
He was able to rebuild a research operation by 1951 when he interested NSU
in development. This lead to collaboration with Walter Froede , head of the
motorcycle racing program, who would ultimately make the decision to adopt
the KKM type. The first truly functional Wankel rotary engine was a DKM type
that ran
in February 1957 .
By May a prototype was able to run for two hours and produce 21 bhp. The
first KKM engine ran on July 7, 1958. Many people had proposed rotary engine
designs,
but none had pursued it for as long or as relentlessly as Felix Wankel. He
and NSU rigorously investigated all technical aspects such as sealing, spark
plug
positioning, port timing, cooling, lubrication, combustion, materials, and
manufacturing tolerances. Thus where all others had failed, he and NSU were
able to
succeed by combining imaginative invention and scientific engineering. In
1957 Wankel had the good business sense to create Wankel GmbH with his
partner at the
time Ernst Hutzenlaub, to manage royalties. In August 1971 Wankel GmbH was
sold to LonRho for 100 million DM ($26.3 million). He created a research
institute
(TES) in Lindau / Bodensee (in 1976?) as a branch of the Frauenhoffer
Institute, but exercised an option to buy it back later. TES was supported
by Daimler Benz
until 1993. There is a "Technische Entwicklungs Stelle" between Lindau and
Bregenz which has some exhibits about Wankel.
Honours: Felix Wankel was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from
Technische Universitat Munchen on December 5, 1969. He received the
Federation of German
Engineers Gold Medal in 1969, Germany's highest civilian honour the Grand
Federal Service Cross in 1970, the Franklin Medal in Philadelphia in 1971,
the
Bavarian Service Medal in 1973, the "Honour Citizen" of Lahr in 1981, and
the title of Professor in 1987. He declined honorary citizenship of Lindau
when the
city rejected his application to build a boathouse with museum there. He
set it up on the Swiss side of the Bodensee, partly as a satellite research
institute
(place to think), partly as a way to obtain Swiss citizenship, partly for
taxes, and partly for neutrality in case of war.
Wankel never possessed a driver's license in his life. There are
Felix-Wankel-Strase streets in Aalen, Dachau, Euskirchen, Heilbronn,
Neckarsulm, Oldenburg,
Ostfildern, Rottenburg, Schweinfurt, Sennfeld, Stuhr (Bremen), and
Zaberfeld, and a Felix-Wankel-Ring in Lenting, all in Germany. Endings In
1986 he sold his
Institute for 100 million DM to Daimler Benz. He was very active late in
life, filing a patent in 1987 that was granted in Jan. 1989. After a long
illness, Dr.
Wankel passed away on October 9, 1988, in Lindau, Germany (ref.), where he
did much of his research and where Wankel R & D is located (though some
place his
death in Heidelberg; ref.).