August Toepler
Encyclopedia
Brühl
-Places and locations:Germany* Brühl * Brühl * Brühl , a street in LeipzigPoland* Brühl Palace, Warsaw-People:* Alois Friedrich von Brühl , a Polish-Saxon diplomat, politician, soldier, actor and playwright...
- March 6, 1912, Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
known for his experiments in electrostatics
Electrostatics
Electrostatics is the branch of physics that deals with the phenomena and properties of stationary or slow-moving electric charges....
. In 1864 he applied Foucault's knife-edge test for telescope mirrors to the analysis of fluid flow and the shock wave
Shock wave
A shock wave is a type of propagating disturbance. Like an ordinary wave, it carries energy and can propagate through a medium or in some cases in the absence of a material medium, through a field such as the electromagnetic field...
. He named this new method schlieren photography
Schlieren photography
Schlieren photography is a visual process that is used to photograph the flow of fluids of varying density. Invented by the German physicist August Toepler in 1864 to study supersonic motion, it is widely used in aeronautical engineering to photograph the flow of air around objects...
, for which he is justifiably famous. He also developed the Toepler machine, an electrostatic influence machine, in 1865 for use in X-ray photography. Improved versions were produced by Wilhelm Holtz
Wilhelm Holtz
Wilhelm Holtz was a German physicist who was a native of Saatel bei Barth, Mecklenburg. Between 1857 and 1862 he studied physics and natural sciences in Berlin, Dijon and Edinburgh...
, Roger and J. Robert Voss.
Toepler's son Maximilien Toepler
Maximilien Toepler
Maximilien Topler was a German physicist known for his work on electrostatics, sparks and Schlieren photography. His father was the physicist August Toepler....
was also a physicist, and worked independently in the same field.
Toepler was also famous for inventing the Toepler Pump
Toepler pump
A Toepler pump is a form of mercury piston pump, invented by August Toepler in 1850.The principle is illustrated in the diagram. When reservoir G is lowered, bulb B and tube T are filled with gas from the enclosure being evacuated . When G is raised, mercury rises in tube F and cuts off the gas in...
as seen in the bottom right hand picture