Carl Richard Nyberg
Encyclopedia
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. Nyberg was born in Arboga
Arboga
Arboga is a locality and the seat of Arboga Municipality in Västmanland County, Sweden with 10,369 inhabitants in 2005.-Overview:The city of Arboga is known to have existed as a town since the 13th century but the area has been inhabited since around 900 AD...
. After school he started working for a jeweller and later he moved to Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
and worked with various metalworks. He later got work at J. E. Eriksons mekaniska verkstad (later renamed to "Mekanikus").
It was while working there that he formulated the idea of the blowtorch. He later worked on the idea and created a blowtorch with strong, directed heat and also with several safety measures built in. He quit his work at Mekanikus in 1882 and set up a workshop at Luntmakargatan in Stockholm making blowtorches. However the business didn't work well because it took too long to both manufacture and sell them. For a time he made a living selling rings supposedly for curing gout
Gout
Gout is a medical condition usually characterized by recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis—a red, tender, hot, swollen joint. The metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of the big toe is the most commonly affected . However, it may also present as tophi, kidney stones, or urate...
. In 1884 he moved his workshop to Sundbyberg. In 1886 he met Max Sievert at a country fair and Sievert became interested in Nyberg's blowtorch and started selling it. After encouragement by the owner of Sundbyberg gård he started AB Alpha and after encouragement from L. M. Ericsson
Lars Magnus Ericsson
Lars Magnus Ericsson was a Swedish inventor, entrepreneur and founder of telephone equipment manufacturer Ericsson ....
he started producing wire
Wire
A wire is a single, usually cylindrical, flexible strand or rod of metal. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads and to carry electricity and telecommunications signals. Wire is commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Standard sizes are determined by various...
.
After Primus started producing blowtorches he also decided to make paraffin
Paraffin
In chemistry, paraffin is a term that can be used synonymously with "alkane", indicating hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n+2. Paraffin wax refers to a mixture of alkanes that falls within the 20 ≤ n ≤ 40 range; they are found in the solid state at room temperature and begin to enter the...
oil/kerosene cookers. The first model, called Viktoria, wasn't very successful, but the later Svea did better. He delivered many to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and soon he produced 3000 per week. In 1906 the company was changed into a stock company. He was quite generous towards his workers and often gave them stock in the company. The workers became known as "Nybergs snobbar" (Nyberg's snobs) because they were generally better off than those who worked in other places. In 1922 the company was sold to Max Sievert who continued to own it until 1964 when it was bought by Esso
Esso
Esso is an international trade name for ExxonMobil and its related companies. Pronounced , it is derived from the initials of the pre-1911 Standard Oil, and as such became the focus of much litigation and regulatory restriction in the United States. In 1972, it was largely replaced in the U.S. by...
.
Nyberg also worked on many other inventions, for instance steam engines, aeroplanes, boat propellers and various other machines. He was most famous as an aviation pioneer and he became known as "Flyg-Nyberg" (Flying-Nyberg). From 1897 and onward until around 1910, outside his home in Lidingö
Lidingö
Lidingö is an island in the inner Stockholm archipelago, located north east of central Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. It is also the seat of Lidingö Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 44,000 inhabitants in 2011....
he built and tested his Flugan
Flugan
Flugan was an early aeroplane designed and built by Carl Richard Nyberg outside his home in Lidingö, Sweden. Construction started in 1897 and he kept working on it until 1922. The craft only managed a few short jumps and Nyberg was often ridiculed, however several of his innovations are still in use...
(The Fly) on a circular wood track in his garden and on the ice during the wintertime. However, due the lack of small effective gasoline engine
Petrol engine
A petrol engine is an internal combustion engine with spark-ignition, designed to run on petrol and similar volatile fuels....
s at that time, he only managed a few short jumps. He worked hard with the help of professor J.E. Cederblom at KTH in the development of wing profiles but did not succeed to get The Fly in the air. He also designed and built his own wind tunnel to be able to make test of small wing models. The Fly had a wingspan of 5 meters, and the surface area of the wings was 13 m². The engine was a steam engine of his own design, with a boiler heated by four of his blowtorches. It produced a maximum of 10 hp (7 kW) at 2000 rpm. The total weight of the plane was 80 kg.