* 30.11.1869 Stenstorp - † 9.12.1937 Stockholm.

Boven: Nils op een lichtboei.

Hij is de uitvinder van een voor de scheepvaart zeer belangrijke, automatische regulateur met ontstekingsinrichting voor gashouders van lichttorens en  -boeien. Voor deze uitvinding ontving hij in 1912 de Nobelprijs voor natuurkunde.

Ago, or Aktiebolaget Gasackumulator, is a classic example of a Swedish company founded at the turn of the century  on the basis of inventive genius.

The company's founder and the creator of the AGA lighthouse Gustaf Dalén received the Nobel prize in 1912 for application of the discovery that an object's dimensions are altered when the degree of heat is changed. The prize citation mentioned: "His inventions of self-acting regulators which in combination with gas accumulators are used for the lighting of lighthouses and light buoys."

THIS DISCOVERY of Dalén's had enabled gas lighthouses which guide shipping all over the world to extinguish themselves at dawn and light themselves at dusk.

Although many significant technical innovations followed over subsequent decades it is no exaggeration to maintain that Dalén's discovery was of great benefit to mankind.

At present lighthouse technology has taken a further step towards rationalisation with the aid of electronics. The flasher can provide flashing light for signalling. AGA’s first business idea was the development of acetylene lighting. hl the 1890's Stockho1m and other large city had just started to install gas lighting while in smaller places kerosene lights were used. Certain French scientists had developed a method for dissolving gas in acetone and filling a container with a ceramic mass in order to prevent gas explosions occurring.

GUSTAF DALÉN made contact with the Gotheburg company, Svenska Carbid & Acetylén, which had just acquired the patent for the acetylene method. Dalén was duly employed there as a chief engineer and in 1904 Carbidbolaget was recons1ructed as AB GasaccumuIator, AGA.

In 1906 Dalén invented the much approved ceramic mass comprising, charcoal, cement, asbestos, woo1 and kieselguhr (today's environmental experts may well tremble!)

Acetylene lighting was thus a technology which grew up parallel with electricity but its future prospects were uncertain due to its genera1 instability.

 SWEDEN is a land whose frontiers are largely coastal and the Swedish pilotage service was quick to adapt new technologies for its lighthouse network. The flashing functions on a kerosene lighthouse were carried out by rotating mirrors. However, kero-sene gas was expensive and the pilotage authority required some- thing which was cheaper in operation and also could provide each lighthouse with its own distinctive characteristics.

So Dalén invented an apparatus which was able to emit very short light flashes - the flasher. This is driven by the small quantity of gas which is consumed by the lighthouse flame itself and enables the lighthouse to acquire whatever flashing pattern might be required: short -long - short, long long, short short and so on. Gradually this invention was followed by the sun valve which extinguishes the lighthouse punctually when it is light and lights it when it is dark.

THE ACEITYLENE METHOD for maritime lighting was kept on because the lighthouses were economic in operation and the flexible lighthouse character was retained. In order to achieve greater light strength, which were required in the case of the large lighthouses in the open sea, gas was used in combination with gas mantles. Gas and air in a proportion of one to ten is highly explosive but in 1909 the so-called Dalén mixer achieved a very precise gas mixture without risk of explosion, regardless of outside conditions. In addition, it gave power to the lens rotation system.

An additional time saver and a step towards full automation was taken when Dalén invented the gas mantle changer: with a store of 24 mantles the lighthouses could be left without supervision for a whole year. A lens pendle with gimbal suspension enabled him to solve the movement of the light buoy on the waves which caused the light's instability. He slowed the lens system movements with a heavy pendle.

Dalén's discoveries, were launched about 5 years later on the world market and were facilitated by AGA’s early establishment in the USA. However, as in the case of other world-ranking Swedish companies it was not the engineering genius who was the entrepreneurial driving force behind the inventions. In AGA's case the entrepreneur was Axel Nordvall who secured large orders from South America over the years 1910-12 which contributed to AGA becoming a world class company.

AFT'ER 80 YEARS of technical development with digressions into the fields of electronics, optics, medical technology and heat engineering AGA has now returned to its core field of gas as its base product. Since industrial applications of I gas remained an expanding sector on the world market the company has fared well in its first and latest business area.
Links: A lot has happened in the gas welding area.

supplying more than 500,000 customers in the areas of food processing, electronics, metallurgy, engineering, chemicals and medicine. The spirit of Gustaf Dalén still hovers over the Lidingö  group.