Chronology

• 1876: Born December 10 in Hallsberg
  Hallsberg
  Hallsberg is a bimunicipal locality and the seat of Hallsberg Municipality, Örebro County, Sweden with 7,122 inhabitants in 2005. It is also partly located in Kumla Municipality.-Overview:...
  
   outside Örebro
  Örebro
  -Sites of interest:Örebro's old town Wadköping is located on the banks of Svartån . It contains many 18th and 19th century wooden houses, along with museums and exhibitions....
  
  , Sweden. Son of the railway station inspector at Hallsberg S. D. Wingqvist and Anna Lundberg.
• 1894: Graduated from Rudbecksskolan in Örebro (Örebro Technical Elementary School).
• 1899: Employed as operating engineer at Gamlestadens Textile Industry in Göteborg where he worked many years to find a solution to the problems with frequent break downs in the ball bearings for the main drive shafts. This was caused by the ground conditions with lots of clay that the factory was built on and the shaft bearing supports moved some fractions of millimeters from time to time, hardly measurable, inducing enormous extra forces in the "stiff" bearings that was available at that time. Wingqvist spend more and more time on the development of bearings in general, collecting all sorts of technical achievements and new ideas that was presented continuously on the ball bearing concepts around Europe. In particular he carefully studied the report presented in 1902 by professor Richard Stribeck working at the Institute of Technology in Dresden, Germany, where he had compared ball bearings versus plain bearings from a scientific point of view. Wingqvist soon realized that the ball bearing techniques had a future and that there was room for innovations. On his initiative a small workshop was set up within the premises of Gamlestadens factory where they could carry out tests with different designs and steel
  Steel
  Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
  
   materials. In 1906 he was granted a patent for a single-row self-aligning ball bearing (Swedish patent
  Patent
  A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
  
   reg. No. 24160) but this type of bearing had the disadvantage that it could not stand very much axial loads. His work continued in order to find the solution for a self aligning bearing that also could carry some axial
  Axial
  Axial may mean:* Along the same line as an axis of rotation in geometry* A type of modal frame in music* One of several anatomical directions in an animal body* Axial age, the period from 800 to 200 BC in China, India and the western world...
  
   loads.
• 1907: On the initiative of Sven Wingqvist and the owners of Gamlestadens Textile Industry, SKF was founded February 16, at first as a subsidiary company to Gamlestadens Textile Industry. He was appointed the managing director as well as technical manager. Axel Carlander, son of one of the owners of Gamlestadens Textile Industry, was appointed CEO for SKF. (Axel Carlander held the position as CEO for SKF until 1937). May 21: SKF sends in the patent application to PRV
  PRV
  PRV may refer to:* Polycythaemia rubra vera, a blood disorder* Pressure reducing valve* Pressure relief valve* Peak Reverse Voltage, a characteristic of diodes* PRV engine, an automobile V6 engine developed by Peugeot Renault and Volvo...
  
   for a multi-row self-aligning radial ball bearing. Patent is granted June 6 with patent reg. No. 25406. Inventor: S.G. Wingqvist. In the patent application a double-row as well as a triple-row ball bearing is described. Within the same period of time, patent applications is sent out by SKF to 10 different countries, among them France
  France
  The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
  
  , Germany
  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...
  
  , England
  England
  England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
  
   and the USA and patent is granted in all countries within a short time. The door was now open for the world wide expansion. After the new factory had been built in Göteborg, SKF sales companies as well as new manufacturing plants were built up in a lot of countries around the world. The first SKF manufacturing plant outside Sweden was set up in Luton, England 1911.
• 1919: He marries Kristina Hult (1892–1963).
• 1919-1932: Wingqvist works as an independent consulting engineer and as part time CEO for SKF.
• 1938-1953: CEO for SKF.
• 1933-1938: Managing director for AB Bofors
  Bofors
  The name Bofors has been associated with the iron industry for more than 350 years.Located in Karlskoga, Sweden, the company originates from the hammer mill "Boofors" founded 1646. The modern corporate structure was created in 1873 with the foundation of Aktiebolaget Bofors-Gullspång...
  
  .
• 1938-1946: CEO for AB Bofors.
• 1941-1953: CEO for the company Svenska Flygmotor AB.

Some of Sven Wingqvist's Swedish patents (Sweden reg. No.)

• 25406 Multi-row self aligning radial ball bearing, 1907
• 26266 Self aligning ball bearing for axial loads, 1908
• 27397 Tool for precision measurements, 1908
• 31707 2-row spherical roller bearing, 1910
• 33901 Ball holder device, Wingqvist and H. Olsson, 1910
• 57197 Roller bearing with pressure flange, Wingqvist and N.A. Palmgren, 1919
• 78223 Device for 2-row roller bearings, 1931
• (list is not complete)

Sources

• SKF - The History of a Swedish Export Industry, 1907-1957 by Birger Steckzén, 1957. Published by SKF.