US EPA

1773647 

Journal Article 

100 years of thermal spray: About the inventor Max Ulrich Schoop 

Siegmann, S; Abert, C 

2013 

1 

Surface and Coatings Technology
ISSN: 0257-8972 

220 

3-13 

10.1016/j.surfcoat.2012.10.034 

WOS:000317875800002 

The Swiss inventor Max Ulrich Schoop is believed to be the
""father"" of thermal spray technology, as he submitted the first two patents in Germany and
Switzerland for a metal spraying process delivering ""dense metallic coatings"" in the year 1909.
This invention was based on the well known observation of his children shooting with Flobert guns
in the garden, where the lead bullets formed splats when hitting the wall. But who was this Mr.
Schoop? Max Ulrich Schoop completed his basic school in Zurich and apprenticeship in graphic
processes at the Kronenberg Institute in Allgau (Germany). After that he returned to Switzerland
as a photographer's assistant and later on as a portrait retoucher. As his oldest brother Paul
worked as a director of a factory for batteries, Schoop was sent to the Moscow branch, where he
left due to health reasons and went to Nizhny-Novgorod as a French and piano teacher. When he
returned to Zurich in 1895 he started to study Physics and Electrotechnology at the Technical
University of Zurich. After that he went to Vienna and Cologne, back in the accumulator business.
In the year 1903 he went to Paris, where he invented the welding of aluminium. In order to market
his invention he travelled to the United States of America where he also met Thomas Alva Edison
in the year 1907. Schoop then returned to Zurich and opened his own laboratory in the year 1910
to further develop the thermal spray technology for the next 35 years. He finally died in Zurich
on February 29, 1956 at the age of 85. May this summary elucidate this brilliant person at the
centenary of the first thermal spray patent application. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights
reserved. 

100 years thermal spray technology; Max Ulrich Schoop; About the inventor; Episodes from his life