Julius Wilhelm Gintl

Physicist. Born 1804 in Prague. He studied mathematics, astronomy and botany at the German University of Prague and worked as adjunct at the institutes of physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna from 1833 to 1836. In May 1836 he was promoted to professor of physics at the University of Graz, which he held till 1847, when he was named provisional inspector of the governmental telegraph office in Vienna, where he was promoted in 1849 first to provisional and in 1850 to director of the office at the Ministry of Commerce, Trade und Public Buidlings. In this occupation Gintl was responsible to lead studies and organise the implementation of telegraphy in Austria. In addition he developed the first portable telegraph for railway cars, the portable telegraph ("Feldtelegraph") and invented (in 1853) the electronic two-way communication on a single telegraph line (the so-called duplex telegraph with two batteries, using the compensation method).[1][2][3]

He was elected corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Vienna, in 1848, honored in 1855 with the golden medal at the "Exposition Universelle des Produits de l'Agriculture, de l'Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris", and retired in 1863.

He died in 1883 in Prague.

Links

• Gintl at German Wikipedia