Vienna (Dec. 20)
The tenth anniversary of the death of Joseph Popper, the electrical pioneer, who was also famous as a philosopher under his pen-name Lynkeus, is being widely observed to-day in the Austrian press to-day, which pays tribute to him, particularly as the first man to conceive the idea of the transmission of electrical power. Most of the papers, too, laud his services as a great thinker and a pioneer of a new rational world order.
Count Coudenhove-Calergi, the founder of the Fan-European movement, publishes an article in which he refers to the irony of the Hitlerist Party programme having adopted as one of its main planks the principle of “Allgemeine Naehrpflicht”, the duty of the State to feed those who work for it, without realising that it is the contribution made to the world by the Jewish thinker, Popper-Lynkeus. The present world crisis, Count Coudenhove asserts, will compel the world to utilise the ideas of a new social world order which were proclaimed by Popper-Lynkeus.
Joseph Popper, who was born in February 1838, in Polin, in Bohemia, which was then part of the Austrian Empire, distinguished himself as an engineer. As a boy he already showed great interest in technical studies, and when he was still a youth he made a number of small inventions, which were followed by his important inventions, such as the boiler protector, the gyroscope, for stabilising the movement of ships, torpedoes, flying machines, etc. He also invented a singleline speed train. His most important achievement in this field, however, is his discovery of the transmission of electrical power. He realised that the mechanical energy of ebb and flow, of winds and of waterfalls can be electrically transmitted to a distant place where this power can be utilised to economic advantage.
He was also recognised in his time as one of the greatest writers on technical subjects. We published numerous essays and papers in technical journals on machinery and other technical matters, some of His papers appearing in the Reports of the Vienna Royal Academy of Science. His most important technical work is the “Physical Foundations of the Transmission of Electrical Power”, which was published by the Vienna Royal Academy of Science.
His other works include “Technical Advances and their Cultural Significance”, “Fantasies of a Realist”, “The Right to Live and the Duty to Die”, “Prince Bismarck and Antisemitism”, “Allgemeine Naehrpflicht als Loesung der sozialen Frage”, in which he sets out a method by which every individual would be released from anxiety about providing for his every-day needs, and “Uber Religion” (About Religion), a work in which he sets out his philosophic opposition to all forms of religion, declaring himself an atheist and claiming that ethics and morals can exist and exist the better without being linked to super-stitution or church.
In 1926 a movement was started to erect a monument to Joseph Popper-Lunkeus, outside the Vienna City Hall, and the appeal which was issued at the time was signed among others by Professor Albert Einstein, the late Arthur Schnitzler, and Count Coudenhove-Calergi.