Richard von Foregger
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| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Born |
27 June 1872 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | 18 January 1960 (aged 87) Roslyn, New York, United States |
| Sport | |
| Sport | Swimming |
| Club | NYAC, New York |
Richard von Foregger (27 June 1872 – 18 January 1960) was an Austrian-American chemist, manufacturer and Olympic swimmer. He was born in Austria, educated in Germany and Switzerland, and worked in the United States, where he invented and mass-produced several air regeneration systems. He moved to the US in 1902, obtained citizenship in 1910, and lived there until his death.
Richard von Foregger was the son of Richard and Elise von Etlinger. His father was a judge and later a senator in the Austrian Parliament. His mother was born and raised in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire. She taught von Foregger some Russian, in addition to his native German and fluent French and English. He graduated from the University of Munich. There he trained in fencing that left lifelong scars on his face. He continued his education at the University of Stuttgart and University of Bern, where he defended his PhD in chemistry in 1896. He then worked for a British company in Russia on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1898, he first visited the United States, where until 1900 worked as electrical engineer at the General Electric in Schenectady, New York.
In 1900, he returned to Europe and lived in Berlin. The same year he competed for Austria at the 1900 Summer Olympics in the 200 m freestyle swimming, but did not reach the final.
In 1902, von Foregger returned to US to work at the Medical Dioxide Co., in New York. There he first developed a method of producing peroxides of magnesium and zinc and then shifted to alkali peroxides aiming to use them for oxygen generation. In 1905, while working at the Roessler and Hasslacher Chemical Co., New York, he produced oxygen by reacting water with fused sodium peroxide.
He quickly moved from chemical experiments to life supporting systems. In 1906 he performed two public experiments, in which a person was sealed in a box for six hours, and a group of rabbits for 15 hours, without showing any breathing discomforts. Shortly thereafter he designed a portable oxygen generator that was tested by mountain climbers, long-distance runners and bicycle racers. In 1907–1909, he patented it and named Autogenor. Since Roessler and Hasslacher were focused on the production of chemicals and not interested in anesthesiology equipment, in 1914 von Foregger established his own production company.
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