Schuckert, Johann Sigmund

Electrical engineer, industrialist

born: 18.10.1846 in Nuremberg

died: 17.09.1895 in Wiesbaden

Schuckert is considered a pioneer of the German electrical industry. He came from a family of craftsmen in Nuremberg. After an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic, he went on a journey and came to Berlin via Munich, Stuttgart and Hanover, where he worked for Siemens & Halske for two months. In 1866, he became a foreman in Albert Krage's mechanical-optical business in Nuremberg; in 1869, he spent a long time in the USA, where he worked in Thomas Alva Edison's telegraph factory in Newark, among other places.

In 1873, he founded the electromechanical workshop Schuckert & Co. in his home town. Two years later, he began supplying dynamo machines. Soon he was manufacturing a wide range of electronic products, including complete power stations. The company grew rapidly and had to move to larger premises. Various Schuckert products were awarded honorary prizes and medals at industrial exhibitions. Schuckert-Werke was also represented at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. 20 years after founding the small workshop in Nuremberg, Schuckert had built up a factory with more than 8,000 employees. In 1893, the company was transformed into Elektrizitäts-AG, which was merged with the heavy current division of Siemens & Halske AG in Berlin in 1903 to form Siemens-Schuckert-Werke; this was merged into Siemens AG in 1966.

Schuckert introduced social measures for employees and workers that went far beyond the legal requirements and also included family members, including a factory health insurance fund (1883). A few years later, he introduced the ten-hour working day (1889) and set up pension funds for workers and employees in 1890.

He spent the last years of his life in Wiesbaden.