Curiosities linked to Penkala
On the advice of his father, Penkala initially went to Vienna to study medicine. But although he was interested in the human skeleton and muscle functions, he could not bear to watch dissections. So he left during his first semester, went to his aunt Maria in Dresden and began to study chemistry. He completed his studies with grade “good”, but since for him the faculty was only a formality to provide him with an academic title, which would in turn win him recognition in technical circles, he did not over-exert himself.
On 30 October 1910 the Penkala trade mark caused no small consternation in Graz – as the Kleine Zeitung wrote.
“To wit, the trainee employed by Mr. Braun, a merchant who held the penkala - pencils representation, advertised the product by wearing a mask in the shape of the above described trade mark, and in his hand he carried a large penkala – using it as a walking stick. The young man was proudly walking the streets of Graz, and everybody laughed at the successful advertisement.”
Not so the policeman at the Local Assembly, who thought that the interest provoked by the young man was in fact a public disgrace. He wasted no time in bringing this “object of public sensation” before his superiors, and the City Council – as the authority in charge of public safety – declared that masks, disguises and masked processions were banned and punishable, and that masked persons would immediately be put behind bars.
According to the Styrian police order dating from 1858, such methods of advertising constituted a violation.
Penkala was a passionate hunter, and he was often in a forest somewhere at night. One such night, when he and his friends, who invited him on a hunt, found themselves in a deep forest with night closing in, he surprised everybody when he lit their way with a pocket electric light.
Everybody gathered around him, and those present included Mr. Heinzel, the then Mayor of Zagreb, sculptor Frangeš, Professor Kršnjavi, and others. They all tested the lamp, pointing it this way and that, and were thoroughly delighted with this “modern lantern”. They all wanted it to be produced for general sale, but nobody had sufficient capital to open a torch factory.
And so the torch remained without financial backing, and Penkala produced only few prototypes for his friends.
While he was working on the construction of his aeroplane Penkala proved a real magnet for numerous curious folk of Zagreb. Day after day they kept returning to the embankment alongside the military training ground, and sat there for hours watching.
They knew him since he was easily identifiable from a distance by his favourite white silk cap with a black visor, the same type of cap worn by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the German builder of the famous air ship.
|