Mannesmann, Reinhard

SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy

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b. 13 May 1856 Remscheid, Bleidinghausen, Germany

d. 22 February 1922 Remscheid, Bleidinghausen, Germany

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German metallurgical engineer.

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Reinhard Mannesmann and his four brothers developed the engineering works at Remscheid that had been founded by their father. With his brother Max, Reinhard devised c. 1885 a method of producing seamless tubes by a rolling process. Factories for manufacturing tubes by this process were established at Remscheid, at Bous in the Saar district and at Komotau in Bohemia. Further developments of the process were patented by the brothers in the years following the initial patent of 1885. The British patent rights for the Mannesmann process were purchased by the Landore Siemens Steel Company in 1888, and the Mannesmann Tube Company was established at Landore in South Wales. This company went into liquidation in 1899 after ten years of production and the Tube Works was then purchased by the Mannesmann family, and a new company, the British Mannesmann Tube Company, was formed. Reinhard and Max Mannesmann took up residence near the Landore works and the business prospered so that by 1914 Landore was employing 1,500 men and producing 35,000 tons of tubing each year. The company was taken over during the First World War by the Custodian of Enemy Property, and after the war a new tube works which had been planned in 1914 was built at Newport, Monmouthshire. The Mannesmann family were able to resume control in 1926 for some ten years, but in 1938 the company became part of the Stewarts \& Lloyds organization.

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Further Reading

G.Evans, 1934, Manufacture of Seamless Tubes Ferrous and Non-Ferrous, London; 1940, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 143:62–3 (both provide technical details of the Mannesmann process for forming seamless tubes).

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