Person

Ressel, Josef (29.06.1793 - 10.10.1857)

Austrian engineer. 

Josef Ressel attended grammar school in Linz from 1806 and trained at the Provincial Artillery School in Budweis from 1809 to 1811. From 1812 to 1814, he studied mechanics, hydraulics and civil engineering at the University of Vienna. Thanks to a scholarship, he was able to complete his studies and training at the Mariabrunn Forestry Academy in 1817. He was subsequently appointed as a forestry administrator in Lower Carniola; in 1821, he was appointed Imperial and Royal Naval Forestry Intendant of the Coastal Domains Inspectorate in Trieste, from where he was also responsible for supplies to the navy in the Mediterranean. There, he also had the opportunity to continue working on his development of the ship’s propeller. In 1827, he was granted his first patent for it in Austria. Two years later, whilst on a trip to Paris, he once again succeeded in building a ship’s propeller. However, as he had not signed a valid contract with the French shipyard, they used his design without sharing the profits with him. In Trieste, between 1827 and 1829, the steamship Civetta was built at Odorico Panfilli’s shipyard; it was powered by a six PS steam engine via a Ressel propeller with a diameter of 1.58 m. The first test runs were successful. In 1840, the British screw steamer ‘Archimedes’ arrived in Trieste. Ressel found that his ideas and concepts had been put into practice in the ship built by Francis Pettit Smith in 1838, without him having received the due recognition for them. Following an unsuccessful attempt to provide credible evidence of his invention to the British government and claim credit for it, he withdrew from public life and died in Ljubljana in 1857. It was not until years later that Ressel and his invention received posthumous recognition.

His portrait appears on the 500-Schilling note issued in 1965. On the reverse is an illustration of the steamship Civetta, propelled by a Ressel screw.

https://d-nb.info/gnd/118744607

https://viaf.org/viaf/69709973

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG131458

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q78558

https://ikmk.smb.museum/ndp/person/17537

05.08.2026