Gustaf Dalén Totally Explained

Everything about Gustaf Dalen totally explained

Nils Gustaf Dalén (November 30, 1869 – December 9 1937) was a Swedish Nobel Laureate and industrialist, the founder of the AGA company and inventor of the AGA cooker and the Dalén light. In 1912 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his automatic valves designed to be used in combination with gas accumulators in lighthouses and light-buoys

Biography

Early life

Dalén was born in Stenstorp, in present day Falköping municipality, Sweden.
   He managed the family farm, which he expanded to include a market garden, a seed merchants and a dairy.
   In 1892 he invented a milk-fat tester to check milk quality of the milk delivered. Gustaf de Laval was so impressed by self-taught Dalén and that he encouraged him to start studying.
   He was admitted to the Chalmers University of Technology where he earned his Master's degree and a Doctorate on leaving in 1896.
   Dalén married Elma Persson in 1901, they'd two daughters and two sons, Gunnar and Anders.

Inventor and Industrialist

Initially Dalén worked with acetylene (IUPAC: ethyne), an extremely explosive hydrocarbon gas. Dalén invented Agamassan (Aga), a substrate used to absorb the gas allowing safe storage and hence commercial exploitation. In 1906 he became Chief Engineer at the Gas Accumulator Company (manufacturer and distributor of acetylene).
   Acetylene produced an ultra-bright white-light and immediately superseded the duller-flamed LPG as the fuel of choice in lighthouse illuminations. This light also caused Dalen to go blind when an experiment involving acetylene exploded. Dalen exploited the new fuel, developing the Dalén light which itself incorporated a further invention, the sun valve. This solar switch controlled the light during the hours of darkness ensuring that the buoys burnt less fuel and would only operate at night. This inevitably prolonged their service life to beyond a year.
   The ‘Dalen Flasher’ was a device that, except for a small pilot light,only consumed gas during the flash stage. This reduced gas consumption by more than 80%.
   In 1909 he ascended to the position of Managing Director of the renamed company Svenska Aktiebolaget Gasaccumulator (AGA). AGA developed lighthouses using Dalén's products.
   To a rugged coastal area like Scandinavia, his mass-produced long-life minimal maintenance buoys were a significant boon to safety and livelihood. Internationally, AGA Lighthouses were built covering the entire Panama Canal. Early in 1912, Dalén was blinded in an acetylene explosion. Later the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. Dalén was too ill to attend the presentation. His brother, ophthalmologist Professor Albin Dalén, of the Caroline Institute stood in his place.
   The presentation speech praised the quality of sacrificing personal safety in scientific experimentation, a compliment that compared Dalén with Nobel himself.
   In 1922 he invented the AGA cooker, and despite his blindness, Dalén remained in control of AGA until 1937.

Honours and awards

University: MA, Chalmers University of Technology
University: PhD, Chalmers University of Technology
Nobel Prize for Physics 1912
Suffered blindness yet ran multi-national company
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Academy of Science and Engineering
100 patents during his lifetime

Further Information

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