Linde as a Producer of Refrigeration Equipment

Abstract

At first glance 21 June 1879 seemed a very bad time to start a business. The young German empire, called to life in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles in January 1871 at the end of the Franco-Prussian war, had just got through the hardest part of an economic crisis that was to last in a less extreme form until 1894. Despite everything, this was the day that after a failed attempt and a year of planning the 37-year-old college teacher Carl Linde with five partners decided to bring the ‘Linde Ice Machine Company’ to life in Wiesbaden. Linde needed first of all to believe in his own talents. This belief was built on the fact that at that point 20 refrigeration machines – Linde’s only product at the time – had already been built according to his patent. The young company believed it would be successful even without advertising. Linde demonstrated his confidence in his new undertaking by giving up his tenure as a college lecturer before the company was formally founded.¹ His example shows how the successful founding of businesses, or spin-offs as universities like now to call them, is determined more by inner qualities than external conditions.