Austria – 100th Anniversary of Chemist Auer von Welsbach
1958 Silver 25 Schilling 30mm (13.08 grams) 0.800 Silver (0.3344 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 2884
CARL AUER V. WELSBACH 1858-1929 ·1958· L·HUJER, Head of Auer von Welsbach, right.
· REPUBLIK · 25 SCHILLING ÖSTERREICH, Value within circle of shields.
Edge Lettering: FUENFUNDZWANZIG SCHILLING

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Carl Auer von Welsbach, also known as Carl Auer, Freiherr von Welsbach (1 September 1858 – 4 August 1929) was an Austrian scientist and inventor, who had a talent not only for discovering advances, but also for turning them into commercially successful products. He is particularly well known for his work on rare-earth elements, which led to the development of the ferro rod used in modern lighters, the gas mantle, which brought light to the streets of Europe in the late 19th century, and for the development of the metal-filament light bulb.

Early life

Carl Auer was born in Vienna on 1 September 1858 to Therese and Alois Auer. Alois, ennobled in 1860, was director of the Imperial printing office (K.-k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei) in the days of the Austrian Empire. Carl went to high schools in Mariahilf and Josefstadt. After leaving school in 1877, he joined the Austro-Hungarian Army and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.

In 1878 Auer entered the University of Vienna, studying mathematics, general chemistry, engineering physics, and thermodynamics. He then moved to the University of Heidelberg in 1880, where he continued his studies in chemistry under the direction of Robert Bunsen (inventor of the Bunsen burner). In 1882 he received his degree of Ph.D. and returned to Vienna to work as an unpaid assistant in Prof. Adolf Lieben’s laboratory, working with chemical separation methods for investigations on rare-earth elements.

Rare earths

In 1885, Von Welsbach used a method that he developed himself to separate the alloy didymium into its two parts for the first time. He saw several differently colored versions, which he named “praseodymium” (green) and “neodidymium” (pink); the latter then became the more common name for the element “neodymium”.

Gas mantle

Later that year Auer von Welsbach received a patent on his development of the gas mantle, which he called Auerlicht, using a chemical mixture of 60% magnesium oxide, 20% lanthanum oxide and 20% yttrium oxide, which he called Actinophor. To produce a mantle, guncotton is impregnated with a mixture of Actinophor and then heated, the cotton eventually burns away, leaving a solid (albeit fragile) ash, which glows brightly when heated. These original mantles gave off a green-tinted light and were not very successful, and his first company formed to sell them failed in 1889.

In 1890 he introduced a new form of the mantle based on a mixture of 99% thorium dioxide and 1% cerium(IV) oxide, which he developed in collaboration with his colleague Dr. Haittinger. These proved both more robust and having a much “whiter” light. Another company founded to produce the newer design was formed in 1891, working with fellow student from the university Ignaz Kreidl, and the device quickly spread throughout Europe. In the United States this technique was adopted by The Coleman Company and became their logo for the company. In the 1980s suit was brought against Coleman due to the volatilization release of Thorium’s Radio-daughters (Decay products) into the air upon incandescence of the mantle. Coleman changed its formulation to use non-radioactive materials, which apparently cost less and lasted longer.

He then started work on development of metal-filament mantles, first with platinum wiring, and then osmium. Osmium is very difficult to work with, but he developed a new method, which mixed osmium oxide powder with rubber or sugar into a paste, which is then squeezed through a nozzle and fired. The paste burns away, leaving a fine wire of osmium.

Although originally intended to be a new mantle, it was during this period that electricity was being introduced into the market, and he started experimenting with ways to use the filaments as a replacement for the electric arc light. He worked on this until finally developing a workable technique in 1898 and started a new factory to produce his Auer-Oslight, which he introduced commercially in 1902. The metal-filament light bulb was a huge improvement on the existing carbon-filament designs, lasting much longer, using about half the electricity for the same amount of light, and being much more robust.

Lighting flint

In 1903 Auer von Welsbach won another patent for a fire striker (“flint”) composition named ferrocerium. Welsbach’s flints consisted of pyrophoric alloys, 70% cerium and 30% iron, which when scratched or struck would give off sparks. This system remains in wide use in cigarette lighters today. In 1907 he formed Treibacher Chemische Werke GesmbH to build and market the devices. In 1920 he received the Siemens-Ring, as his name had become a synonym for the rise of artificial lighting.

For the rest of his life he turned again to “pure” chemistry and published a number of papers on chemical separation and spectroscopy. He presented a major paper on his work on the separation of radioactive elements in 1922.

Commemoration

In 2008 (150 years of his birth) Auer von Welsbach was selected as a main motif for a high-value collectors’ coin: the Austrian €25 Fascination Light. The reverse has a partial portrait of Auer on the left-hand side. The sun shines in the middle of the green niobium pill, while several methods of illumination from the gas light from incandescent light bulbs and neon lamps to modern light-emitting diodes spread out around the silver ring.

Austria, officially the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich), is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.5 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,879 square kilometres (32,386 sq mi). Austria’s terrain is highly mountainous, lying within the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and Austrian German in its standard form is the country’s official language. Other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene.

The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. From the time of the Reformation, many Northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. The Thirty Years War, the influence of the Kingdom of Sweden and Kingdom of France, the rise of the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Napoleonic invasions all weakened the power of the Emperor in the North of Germany, but in the South, and in non-German areas of the Empire, the Emperor and Catholicism maintained control. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria was able to retain its position as one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. Following Napoleon’s defeat, Prussia emerged as Austria’s chief competitor for rule of a larger Germany. Austria’s defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary. After the defeat of France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, Austria was left out of the formation of a new German Empire, although in the following decades its politics, and its foreign policy, increasingly converged with those of the Prussian-led Empire. During the 1914 July Crisis that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Germany guided Austria in issuing the ultimatum to Serbia that led to the declaration of World War I.

After the collapse of the Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria adopted and used the name the Republic of German-Austria (Deutschösterreich, later Österreich) in an attempt for union with Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919. In the 1938 Anschluss, Austria was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany.^[14] This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies and Austria’s former democratic constitution was restored. In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral.

Today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $52,216 (2014 est.). The country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, and is a founder of the OECD. Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro in 1999.