Leybold celebrates its 175th anniversary
The German vacuum specialist Leybold is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year. The company was founded by Ernst Leybold in Cologne in 1850 and has since contributed many new innovations in vacuum technology.
Leybold's core competencies include the development and manufacture of standardized, individual solutions for vacuum generation and process gas conveying as well as customer-specific vacuum systems. The vacuum pioneer's components, systems and services play an important role in many areas worldwide, for example in industrial coating, analytics and research and development processes. The entrepreneur Ernst Leybold laid the foundations for the company when he moved from Bavaria to the Rhineland in 1850. With the registration of the company in Cologne, Leybold became the founder of industrial vacuum technology. Even after the sale of the company in 1870, which continued to operate under the name "E. Leybold's Nachfolger", his vision remained intact.
Breakthrough in vacuum technology
In 1906, his successors achieved a breakthrough in vacuum technology in collaboration with Dr. Wolfgang Gaede: for example, with the basic principle of the turbomolecular pump (1911) and the application of the diffusion pump (1913), both of which are still in use today. The gas ballast device for pumping out vapors, patented in 1935, is also still in use. The beginnings of vacuum metallurgy date back to 1913: Dr. Wilhelm Rohn, head of the physical testing laboratory at W.C. Heraeus GmbH, developed a process for melting high-purity metals in a vacuum in Hanau, which was patented in 1918. In 1931, Wilhelm Carl Heraeus succeeded in vaporizing metals on glass, paving the way for vacuum coating technology. Subsequently, vacuum technology was increasingly used in process engineering. In September 2016, the Swedish company Atlas Copco AB, based in Stockholm, acquired 100 percent of Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum, which is now part of Atlas Copco's Vacuum Technique business unit.