Vladimir Shukhov was called by his contemporaries "the man-factory" and "Russian Leonardo". He developed the oil industry and construction, heat engineering and shipbuilding, military and restoration business. According to his drawings, they laid oil pipelines and designed river tankers, erected towers and built factories.
"Man of Life" Vladimir Shukhov
Vladimir Shukhov was born in 1853 in the district town of Graivoron, Kursk province. His mother came from an old noble family, his father worked as a lawyer, auditor of the Ministry of Finance. The family was not rich and lived on the salary of the head of the family. In the service of his father, he was often transferred: first to Kursk, then to St. Petersburg.
At the age of 11, Vladimir Shukhov entered the Fifth St. Petersburg Gymnasium. Even then, the boy showed an ability for exact sciences, especially mathematics. In the fourth grade, he created his own proof of the Pythagorean theorem - logical and concise.
In 1871 Shukhov graduated with honors from the gymnasium. He entered the Moscow Imperial Technical School (today - the Bauman Moscow State Technical University). Among his teachers were the famous mathematician Alexei Letnikov, scientist in the field of railway transport mechanics Dmitry Lebedev, the founder of modern hydro- and aerodynamics Nikolai Zhukovsky. They required students to have an impeccable knowledge of physics and chemistry, mathematics and architecture. Vladimir Shukhov was a diligent student: he read additional literature, worked with enthusiasm in the workshops of the school. In 1874 he created his first invention, practically valuable. It was a steam nozzle for burning liquid fuel. This small detail made the process safer, more convenient and more economical.
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In 1876 Shukhov graduated from college with a gold medal. Nikolai Zhukovsky invited him to teach and study science together, and the famous mathematician Pafnutiy Chebyshev invited him to work at St. Petersburg University. However, Shukhov was not attracted to theoretical research, he dreamed of engaging in inventions. “I am a man of life,” he said, which is why he decided to become a practical engineer.
In the same year, Vladimir Shukhov, as the best graduate of the Imperial School, went to the United States for a year as part of a scientific delegation. In America, there was a lot to learn: the latest technical ideas were rapidly introduced here, and huge money from various charitable foundations was spent on engineering developments.
The creator of the oil industry
A year later, Vladimir Shukhov returned to St. Petersburg, where he got a job at the drafting bureau of the Warsaw-Vienna Railway. Gray days began. However, the life of the young engineer soon changed dramatically. He was found by a successful entrepreneur Alexander Bari, whom Shukhov met while still in America. Bari signed a lucrative contract with the Nobel brothers' partnership, the owners of the Baku oil fields, and offered Shukhov to head the Baku branch of his firm. The young engineer agreed.
When Shukhov arrived at the Baku field, he saw disorganization, numerous fires and oil slush. Oil was mined in buckets and transported in barrels. Kerosene was then considered the only useful product from it - it was used for lighting needs. And gasoline and fuel oil obtained in the production of kerosene were considered industrial waste. Gasoline evaporated, and fuel oil was poured into pits, which polluted the surrounding nature.
The twenty-five-year-old engineer began to introduce his innovations in production. He installed steam nozzles, cylindrical tanks on equipment, and designed the first pipeline for pumping oil.
But the main thing is that Vladimir Shukhov discovered the cracking process, which made it possible to separate oil into fractions. Now, during its distillation, it was possible to obtain not only kerosene, but also motor oils, diesel fuel, fuel oil, and gasoline. The world's first industrial continuous thermal cracking unit for oil was designed and patented by Vladimir Shukhov together with his assistant Sergei Gavrilov in 1891. His invention began to be used more widely a little later, when a large number of gasoline-powered cars appeared.
Vladimir Shukhov worked in the Bari office for almost half a century. Here he had the freedom of action that any inventor needs so much.
Factory Man
At the beginning of the 1890s, a period of peak prosperity began in the life of Vladimir Shukhov, which later one of his collaborators called "a continuous triumph of intelligence and wit." The engineer began to devote more time to the field of metal structures. This interest in Shukhov appeared when he was working on the construction of the floors of the Upper Trading Rows (today - GUM) on Red Square in Moscow. For the roof of the building, he created unique translucent ceilings - arched truss structures. The weight of the iron parts of the rafters was more than 800 tons, but, as the composer Alexander Razmadze wrote, "by its appearance, the grid of ceilings was something so light and thin that it looked like a cobweb from below with glass cut into it."
In 1896, at the All-Russian Art and Industry Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir Shukhov presented several of his inventions in the field of metal structures: the already known arched truss and new mesh coverings. Also on display was a hyperboloid water tower invented by an engineer. To create it, Shukhov took two metal rings and connected them with equal-sized slings, and then turned the rings relative to each other. Absolutely straight lines formed a curved figure - a one-sheet hyperboloid. The structure invented by Shukhov was elegant and durable, at the same time simple and cheap to assemble: for its construction, only metal base rings, straight slats and fasteners were required.
After the Nizhny Novgorod exhibition, Vladimir Shukhov received numerous orders. The engineer designed and built hundreds of water towers, erected several railway bridges with spans, and drew up a new project for the water supply of Moscow. He invented new designs of spatial flat trusses and used them in the design of the coverings of the Museum of Fine Arts (The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts), the Moscow General Post Office, the Bakhmetyevsky garage, the halls and landing stage of the Kievsky railway station in Moscow.
After the coup d'etat of 1917, Shukhov turned down numerous invitations from abroad. He wrote in his diary: “We must work independently of politics. Towers, boilers, rafters are needed, and we will be needed. The Bari firm and plant were nationalized, Shukhov was evicted from the mansion. These are difficult times for the engineer and his family.
In 1920, Shukhov's youngest son went to prison. To free him, the engineer transferred all his patents worth 50 million gold to the Soviet state. The son was released, but he was so exhausted and exhausted that he never regained consciousness and died. In the same year, the mother of the engineer died, followed by his wife.
However, Vladimir Shukhov continued to work hard, for which his contemporaries called him “the man-factory”. The inventor designed a tower for a radio station on Shabolovka in Moscow: it consisted of six mesh hyperboloid steel sections 160 meters high. On March 19, 1922, the first radio broadcasts began to be broadcast from it. An architectural masterpiece of the avant-garde era does not just fulfill its functions - the Shukhov tower is included in the List of cultural monuments with a protected status, recommended for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Hyperboloid towers of this design are being built today in many countries of the world.
All major Soviet construction projects of the first five-year plans were associated with the name of Vladimir Shukhov. The engineer participated in the implementation of the country's electrification plan: he created a tower structure for a transmission line across the Oka River. He designed open-hearth workshops of Vyksa, Petrovsky, Taganrog plants, Azovstal plant, launched the Soviet cracking plant in Baku.
In 1929, Vladimir Shukhov received the Lenin Prize for the invention of the oil cracking process, in 1932 - the Star of the Hero of Labor and became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, and then an honorary academician. Until the end of his days, he continued to work.
Vladimir Shukhov died in 1939. They buried him at the Novodevichy cemetery.