The rector who took students from lectures to real machines

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The rector who took students from lectures to real machines

Rector of the Brno technical university and four-time Dean of the former Department of Mechanical Engineering, Zdeněk Elger of Elgenfeld was not only a distinguished Czech engineer and designer of refrigeration equipment, but also a court expert, a sports official and a nobleman. He taught for 36 years at what is today Brno University of Technology (BUT) and sent his students to work with real machines in factories. Today we commemorate the 155th anniversary of his birth. Zdeněk Elger of Elgenfeld was a distinguished Czech engineer and designer of refrigeration equipment. | Author: BUT archives

Zdeněk Elger of Elgenfeld was born on 30 October 1871 in Nové Strašecí near Rakovník and died on 15 December 1940 in Brno. As a professor of machine science, he specialised in heat engines and refrigeration. At the Brno technical university, which he joined in 1901, he built a heat laboratory. On four occasions he headed the Department of Mechanical Engineering as its Dean . In the academic year 1905/1906 he also served as Rector of the Brno technical university.

From Adamov to the decks of cruisers

Zdeněk Elger of Elgenfeld was born in the Rakovník region. After attending a secondary school (Realschule) in Hradec Králové, he studied mechanical engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague , and immediately after his graduation in 1893 he joined the engineering company Märky, Bromovský & Schulz in Hradec Králové.

It was this company that brought him to Moravia when, in 1899, it appointed Elger, then only twenty-seven years old, chief engineer and director of its engineering works in Adamov. The plant, employing more than 600 workers, had until then focused mainly on equipment for breweries, distilleries, mills and sugar refineries. Elger added a new line of production: refrigeration machines .

It was in Adamov that the first domestically built refrigeration machines for the Austro-Hungarian Navy were produced, specifically for the protected cruiser SMS Szigetvár and the armoured cruiser SMS Kaiser Karl VI. Both ships later also served during the First World War. Elger also provided consultancy on refrigeration calculations and tests for Italian and Russian ships, as well as for industrial plants on land.

The professor who taught at the machines

Zdeněk Elger was invited to join the newly founded Czech Technical University in Brno by Professor Josef Líčka, with the support of Minister Antonín Rezek, who happened to be staying in Adamov at the time. On 27 October 1901, Elger was appointed full professor of general and theoretical machine science and was entrusted with building a heat laboratory at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the predecessor of today’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (FME).

From the outset, he wanted students not only to know machines from lectures, but also to have the opportunity to try them out for themselves. He therefore introduced compulsory practical exercises with machines. As the school initially had no machines of its own, testing took place on steam engines and boilers directly in Brno factories and, when there were not enough of them willing to accommodate the Czech technical university, outside Brno as well. He gradually added the testing of heat engines to the curriculum and, from the academic year 1913/14, lectures on the design of refrigeration machines, which, according to a publication of the time, were the very first of their kind in Austria. In 1926, practical exercises on fuels and oils were added. He also explained his approach to students in the matriculation address he delivered as Rector in December 1905:

“Specialist lectures are accompanied by exercises, by the application of what has been lectured in design exercises, and indeed, insofar as the means permit at this time of scarcity of technical laboratories, by exercises on actual machines; the student is guided towards independent work and his capacity for independent judgement is awakened.”

When the new buildings of the technical university on Veveří Street were opened on 24 June 1911, he was already able to show visitors a well-equipped mechanical engineering laboratory . Until his retirement, he continued to expand it with the most modern measuring and control instruments and new testing stations. An excerpt from Elger’s article “From the Heat Laboratory of the Institute of Theoretical and General Machine Science”. | Author: BUT archives

Expert and specialist beyond the lecture hall