Slavoljub Penkala
Slavoljub Penkala is one of the most versatile scientists and inventors in the history of all mankind, and because of this he is not only one of the greatest Croatian inventors, but globally one of the greatest inventors of all time.
Born in Slovakia as Eduard, from a Polish father and a Dutch mother, this great inventor chose to become a Croat and therefore we have every right to call him a Croatian inventor. Many are Croats because they had no choice, they are Croats only by their place of birth, and they don’t feel that way, love for the homeland is much stronger when it is the result of one’s own choice, especially when it comes to an intellectual who could have sought his happiness anywhere in the world.
After his doctorate and marriage, he moved to Zagreb and fell in love with this country and its capital. He fell in love to such an extent that he croatized his name and became Slavoljub Penkala. In support of his Croatianness, despite his origin, is also the fact that he changed his name to be more Croatian at the time of fierce Hungarianization, when it was very inconvenient, even dangerous, to emphasize his Croatianness.
His gesture of choosing Croatia as his homeland and taking a Croatian name was interpreted by the authorities in Hungary as a political step, which was warmly welcomed by the Croatian intellectuals of the time, while the Hungarians fiercely opposed it. Slavoljub himself was a fierce opponent of Hungarianization and was extremely pro-Croatian.
Considering his exceptional achievements and numerous inventions, in this text we will not deal with his schooling, growing up and family life, but we will focus on his numerous inventions with which he improved humanity.
His first invention was a hot water heater, which he patented in Budapest in 1903. His water heater was the forerunner of the thermos bottle, the invention of which can also be attributed to Penkala, although the thermos bottle was patented by another man who stole the idea from Penkala and based on his thermos bottle, completely copying Penkala’s working principles, he created his “own” invention.
In 1905, he invented the rotating toothbrush. Namely, his daughter had extremely sensitive gums and therefore did not like to brush her teeth with a traditional brush because it was painful for her. Penkala, in order to reduce her discomfort, came up with the idea of inventing a toothbrush that rotates by itself, and by rotating it brushes its teeth by itself, which all his household members were delighted with.
At the end of January 1906, he patented the world’s first mechanical pencil in Hungary and England, which he named simply after his own surname, thus gaining worldwide fame for both his invention and his name. After only ten prototypes of the mechanical pencil, which he had been making himself for some time, more than 100,000 orders arrived from all over Europe in a very short time. This invention spread throughout the world and to this day the same working principle that Penkala conceived and patented is used for the functioning of mechanical pencils. Due to the great popularity of his pencils, he had to sell the patent to a major European company so that the needs of mass production could be met.
He also invented solid ink, so he was the first in the world to patent a fountain pen with solid ink, and he also invented a pen and fountain pen holder (the so-called knips), which solved the problems of ink leakage, for which the pockets of many citizens were very grateful to Pens because they were no longer stained with ink every day, because these inventions solved the problems of ink leakage.
Slavoljub Penkala should also be seen from the perspective of an unconventional scientist who was an extremely sociable man. From him, we can learn how important it is to look back at things and phenomena around us, because this is often how we can come up with new ideas and achievements.
Penkala was a frequent visitor to Zagreb’s restaurants and cafes, and there he noticed tablecloths that were often stained with wine, coffee or other heavy stains, so he thought about how to find a solution and, after various chemical experiments, he came up with a washing powder with which he could easily removed the stains from the fabric. At the time, there was no greater interest in the wider production of Penkala’s powder, so it was used in their household, but his laundry bleach, which he discovered at the same time, found much wider interest.
Slavoljub Penkala was a man who highly valued order and cleanliness and was careful about his appearance and the tidiness of his work space. He often stayed in hotels and was bothered by insects that were often found in hotel rooms or laboratories where he worked, and since there were no means that kill insects without being harmful to people, Penkala thought about how to solve that problem. He experimented, conducted experiments and came up with the first insecticide, effective against insects and safe for humans, which he placed on the market under the name
“Krepax”.
He was also an avid hunter and often went hunting with his friends. On one occasion, during a night hunt, his friends were surprised when Penkala suddenly lit up everything with a pocket electric flashlight in the middle of the forest in the dark night. He shared these lamps with his friends and there was interest in mass production, but the production was extremely expensive and demanding, and in Zagreb there was no such capacity, so everything remained on a few prototypes.
As a nature lover, he was fascinated by the flight of birds and butterflies and the behavior of their wings and tails during takeoff and landing. With this in mind, he developed a type of aircraft unique in the world at the time. He designed the tail of the aircraft in such a way that, with the help of steel wires connected to the steering wheel, its shape can be changed during take-off and landing. In 1909, he applied for a patent for his airplane, and in 1910 he was already successfully flying his patented airplane.
The Wright brothers made the first airplane flight in 1903, and the first Croatian airplane, designed by Penkala, took off only seven years after the first flight in the history of mankind, which placed Croatia at the top of the world in terms of technical and scientific progress. In the same year, Penkala opened the first Croatian airport at Črnomerac in Zagreb. Until the end of his life, he patented several other types of aircraft.
He invented a new material from which gramophone records were cast, and he also perfected gramophone needles, which with his improvements have now become twenty times more durable.
He invented anode batteries, a rotary turbine, xylolite (a material for impregnating railway tracks), wagon brakes, he worked on special microphones and listening devices, his ideas were perfected in the Austro-Hungarian army and these listening devices were called “Penkala”.
Penkala also invented a medicine against rheumatism, which he named Radium D Francovka. He was also a marketing genius of his time and applied some very modern marketing principles in promoting his products.
He died prematurely, at the age of 51, at the height of his intellectual creativity, and many blueprints for inventions were found that were never fully completed.