Casimir Zeglen
Casimir Zeglen was a Polish engineer who invented a silk bulletproof vest. At the age of 18 he entered the Resurrectionist Order in Lwów. In 1890, he moved to the United States. In 1893, after the assassination of Carter Harrison Sr., the mayor of Chicago, he worked on an improved silk bulletproof vest. BORN: VILLAGE OF KACZANÓWKA IN GALICIA , THENIN THE AUSTRIAN PARTITION OF THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN MONARCHY DIED: DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH UNKNOWN, AMBIGUOUS. PROBABLY SOMETIME IN THE 1920S |
Każimierz Żegleń: The bullet proof vest story (video)
It’s 16th March 1897 in Chicago. Two men stand face-to-face in a huge square, one pointing a revolver at the other. It seems like the whole city is there watching: the mayor, the chief of police, a mob of spectators, and a priest, just in case the first public demonstration of the bullet proof vest on a live human fails. The bullet proof vest is the story of 2 Poles, the one who invented it and the one who tried to take the credit for it.
While anti-bullet chest armour had been experimented with in various forms since the early-16th-century, the first commercial bulletproof vest was developed in 1897 by two Polish inventors. The first was Każimierz Żegleń, a catholic monk and part-time inventor from Tarnopol Polamd. At the age of 18 Każimierz joined the Congregation of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. A few years later he emigrated to the Chicago, USA where he served in the parish of St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church, then the largest Polish church in America, with 40,000 in the parish
At the time of his arrival in Chicago, US society like Europe was being rocked by anarchist terrorists carrying out repeated attacks on public figures. Multiple assassination attempts were carried out and eventually Chicago’s mayor, Carter Harrison Senior, was murdered at his own house. Being a spiritual man, Żegleń was deeply distraught by these tragic events and decided to use his inventiveness to save people’s lives. The monk started working on bulletproof armour of a new kind, so light that people could wear them on top of or under their usual clothes. Somehow he came across the research of Dr. George E. Goodfellow, of Tombstone, Arizona, known as doctor to the gunfighters. Goodfellow noted how several gunshot victims he had treated had reduced injuries when silk fabric was between the bullet and the body. Curious to expand on this research, Żegleń got to work and produced a 1cm thick woven-silk vest that was publically-demonstrated in 1897 with the monk-inventor as guinea pig and his assistant firing a pistol point-blank at his chest.
Żegleń was unharmed and the demonstration was a resounding success, though his invention was incredibly expensive (about US$800 at the time) and the essential-weaving process was extremely slow, zeglen did it by hand. Zeglen was not an engineer and had no knowledge of manufacturing so he set out the US East Coast to see if he could find investors and engineering talent that was interested in commercializing his invention. He found none, so he kept going east, back to the old country. In Vienna he met Jan Szczpanik, another Pole who was also known as the Polish Edison.
Szczepanik, who had been developing automated weaving technology for years, teamed up with Żegleń and managed to work out the mass production of weaved slik bullet proof vests. Szczpanik was so impressed with the invention that he tried numerous time to buy the patent rights from Zeglen. Zeglen refused to sell and eventually they had a falling-out over business relations. Szczepanik gave public demonstrations without Zeglen and began to claim the invention as his own. Zeglen eventually returned to Chicago. It was Szczepanik's weaving production and entrepreneurship that made him profit more off the success of the bulletproof vest - so much so, infact, that Żegleń's contributions are all but forgotten today. But how much Szczpanik profited is unknown, the vest was still expensive and the main customers were government officials and Royalty who demanded secrecy. Still Publicity assisted the vest's popularity, when Spain’s King Alfonso XIII, survived an assassination attempt after Szczepanik had gifted him with his very own. It's been alleged that the Szczepanik had also offered one to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who refused and ended up getting shot leading to the First World War.
Zeglen offered a vest to US President William McKinley However, the presidential secretary, George B. Cortelyou, rejected his offer. Two weeks later McKinley was assassinated. Zeglen was never able to commercialize the vest in America because basically nobody was interested, the vest could not stop a rifle round, so the US Army was not interested and ironically the pacifist movement in America was against the vest thinking it would only prolong war and make it more palatable. Szczepanik was a successful businessmand and met Mark Twain in Vienna where Twain dubbed him “the Austrian Edison and dedicated two articles about Szczepanik and his inventions. Szczepanik was Polish and proud, he hated being referred to as the Austrian Edison. An honest mistake by Twain probably because of the location of Galicia in the Austria-Hungary partition of Poland. It's interesting to note that over 60 years later, an American woman of Polish decent, Stephanie Kwolek, developed the polymer for kevlar, the fabric which is used in today's standard-issue bulletproof vests!
Jan Szczepanik, born of peasant stock on June 13, 1872 in the small village of Rudniki Polish Partion, Galicia (now in the Ukraine)Died: April 18, 1926, Tar now, Poland, his adopted home town.
Każimierz Żegleń
Nationality: Polish (100% Westman)
Born: village of Kaczanówka in Galicia , then in the Austrian partition of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
Died: Date and place of death unknown, ambiguous. Probably sometime in the 1920s
Not much is know about Casimir Zeglen, He was a Catholic priest of St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church in Chicago, then the largest Polish church in America, with 40,000 in the parish. In his early twenties, he began experimenting with the cloth, using steel shavings, moss, and hair. It was while doing this research, he came upon the work of Dr. George E. Goodfellow[citation needed], who had written about the bullet-resistive properties of silk. Szczepanik was a successful businessmand and met Mark Twain in Vienna where Twain dubbed him “the Austrian Edison and dedicated two articles about Szczepanik and his inventions. Szczepanik was Polish and proud, he hated being referred to as the Austrian Edison. An honest mistake by Twain probably because of the location of Galicia in the Austria-Hungary partition of Poland.Neither the fictional nor the real nineteenth century prototype telectroscopes were real television systems. "Telectroscope" was eventually replaced by the term "television", most probably coined by Constantin Perskyi in 1900.
Jan Szczepanik died on 18 April 1926 in Tarnow
It’s 16th March 1897 in Chicago. Two men stand face-to-face in a huge square, one pointing a revolver at the other. It seems like the whole city is there watching: the mayor, the chief of police, a mob of spectators, and a priest, just in case the first public demonstration of the bullet proof vest on a live human fails. The bullet proof vest is the story of 2 Poles, the one who invented it and the one who tried to take the credit for it.
While anti-bullet chest armour had been experimented with in various forms since the early-16th-century, the first commercial bulletproof vest was developed in 1897 by two Polish inventors. The first was Każimierz Żegleń, a catholic monk and part-time inventor from Tarnopol Polamd. At the age of 18 Każimierz joined the Congregation of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. A few years later he emigrated to the Chicago, USA where he served in the parish of St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church, then the largest Polish church in America, with 40,000 in the parish
At the time of his arrival in Chicago, US society like Europe was being rocked by anarchist terrorists carrying out repeated attacks on public figures. Multiple assassination attempts were carried out and eventually Chicago’s mayor, Carter Harrison Senior, was murdered at his own house. Being a spiritual man, Żegleń was deeply distraught by these tragic events and decided to use his inventiveness to save people’s lives. The monk started working on bulletproof armour of a new kind, so light that people could wear them on top of or under their usual clothes. Somehow he came across the research of Dr. George E. Goodfellow, of Tombstone, Arizona, known as doctor to the gunfighters. Goodfellow noted how several gunshot victims he had treated had reduced injuries when silk fabric was between the bullet and the body. Curious to expand on this research, Żegleń got to work and produced a 1cm thick woven-silk vest that was publically-demonstrated in 1897 with the monk-inventor as guinea pig and his assistant firing a pistol point-blank at his chest.
Żegleń was unharmed and the demonstration was a resounding success, though his invention was incredibly expensive (about US$800 at the time) and the essential-weaving process was extremely slow, zeglen did it by hand. Zeglen was not an engineer and had no knowledge of manufacturing so he set out the US East Coast to see if he could find investors and engineering talent that was interested in commercializing his invention. He found none, so he kept going east, back to the old country. In Vienna he met Jan Szczpanik, another Pole who was also known as the Polish Edison.
Szczepanik, who had been developing automated weaving technology for years, teamed up with Żegleń and managed to work out the mass production of weaved slik bullet proof vests. Szczpanik was so impressed with the invention that he tried numerous time to buy the patent rights from Zeglen. Zeglen refused to sell and eventually they had a falling-out over business relations. Szczepanik gave public demonstrations without Zeglen and began to claim the invention as his own. Zeglen eventually returned to Chicago. It was Szczepanik's weaving production and entrepreneurship that made him profit more off the success of the bulletproof vest - so much so, infact, that Żegleń's contributions are all but forgotten today. But how much Szczpanik profited is unknown, the vest was still expensive and the main customers were government officials and Royalty who demanded secrecy. Still Publicity assisted the vest's popularity, when Spain’s King Alfonso XIII, survived an assassination attempt after Szczepanik had gifted him with his very own. It's been alleged that the Szczepanik had also offered one to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who refused and ended up getting shot leading to the First World War.
Zeglen offered a vest to US President William McKinley However, the presidential secretary, George B. Cortelyou, rejected his offer. Two weeks later McKinley was assassinated. Zeglen was never able to commercialize the vest in America because basically nobody was interested, the vest could not stop a rifle round, so the US Army was not interested and ironically the pacifist movement in America was against the vest thinking it would only prolong war and make it more palatable. Szczepanik was a successful businessmand and met Mark Twain in Vienna where Twain dubbed him “the Austrian Edison and dedicated two articles about Szczepanik and his inventions. Szczepanik was Polish and proud, he hated being referred to as the Austrian Edison. An honest mistake by Twain probably because of the location of Galicia in the Austria-Hungary partition of Poland. It's interesting to note that over 60 years later, an American woman of Polish decent, Stephanie Kwolek, developed the polymer for kevlar, the fabric which is used in today's standard-issue bulletproof vests!
Jan Szczepanik, born of peasant stock on June 13, 1872 in the small village of Rudniki Polish Partion, Galicia (now in the Ukraine)Died: April 18, 1926, Tar now, Poland, his adopted home town.
Każimierz Żegleń
Nationality: Polish (100% Westman)
Born: village of Kaczanówka in Galicia , then in the Austrian partition of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
Died: Date and place of death unknown, ambiguous. Probably sometime in the 1920s
Not much is know about Casimir Zeglen, He was a Catholic priest of St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church in Chicago, then the largest Polish church in America, with 40,000 in the parish. In his early twenties, he began experimenting with the cloth, using steel shavings, moss, and hair. It was while doing this research, he came upon the work of Dr. George E. Goodfellow[citation needed], who had written about the bullet-resistive properties of silk. Szczepanik was a successful businessmand and met Mark Twain in Vienna where Twain dubbed him “the Austrian Edison and dedicated two articles about Szczepanik and his inventions. Szczepanik was Polish and proud, he hated being referred to as the Austrian Edison. An honest mistake by Twain probably because of the location of Galicia in the Austria-Hungary partition of Poland.Neither the fictional nor the real nineteenth century prototype telectroscopes were real television systems. "Telectroscope" was eventually replaced by the term "television", most probably coined by Constantin Perskyi in 1900.
Jan Szczepanik died on 18 April 1926 in Tarnow