Johan Richter (inventor)
Encyclopedia
Johan Richter was an engineer and industrialist, but above all a groundbreaking inventor in the area of pulp and paper production. A global company – Kamyr (now part of Metso Paper) in Karlstad
Karlstad
Karlstad is a city, the seat of Karlstad Municipality, the capital of Värmland County, and the largest city in the province Värmland in Sweden. The city had 61,685 inhabitants in 2010 out of a municipal total that during the first quarter 2010 was 84,885 inhabitants...

 Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 – was created solely on his inventions. Kamyr become very successful and had a staggering dominance within its core activities. He is by many in the business considered The Father of the modern pulp industry.

Background

Richter grew up in Narvik
Narvik
is the third largest city and municipality in Nordland county, Norway by population. Narvik is located on the shores of the Narvik Fjord . The municipality is part of the Ofoten traditional region of North Norway, inside the arctic circle...

 in the Northern part of Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. His father had a management position at LKAB
LKAB
LKAB is a Swedish mining company. The company mines iron ore at Kiruna and at Malmberget in northern Sweden. The company was established in 1890, and has been 100% state-owned since the 1950s...

 who shipped its ore through Narvik. From 1919 he went to school in Trondheim
Trondheim
Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of...

 and was actually commuting on the famous Hurtigruten
Hurtigruten
Hurtigruten or Hurtigruta is a Norwegian passenger and freight line with daily sailings along Norway's western and northern coast. Sometimes referred to in English as Norwegian Coastal Express, Hurtigruten ships sail almost the entire length of the country, completing the roundtrip journey in 11...

 as there was no roads at that time. He graduated as a Mechanical Engineer Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
The Norwegian University of Science and Technology , commonly known as NTNU, is located in Trondheim. NTNU is the second largest of the eight universities in Norway, and, as its name suggests, has the main national responsibility for higher education in engineering and technology...

 in 1924. After a short venue in Narvik he took on a position in the Southern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 where is worked on Turbines and advanced pumping equipment. In the weekend he was climbing or skiing in the Pyrénées
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain...

 reminding him of the nature at home in Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. In France he met his Norwegian wife-to-be, Astri. He married Astri Rören (1908–1992). Two children: Ole Johan (1929) Einar Christian (1932–1997). Richter returned to Norway and settled in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 where joined Thunes Mechanical workshop. He continued to work on Turbines but there were as well some new ideas within pulp bleaching. However due to the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

 he was let go in 1932.

An industrialist – Knud Dahl – at Myrens Verkstäder (Myrens Mechanical Workshop) had heard about Richter and they met. Richter convinced Dahl he had the vision and skills to develop a new technology for pulp bleaching in a continuous process. Myrens Verkstäder and Karlstads Mekaniska Verkstad (KMW) in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 already had a small joint venture within pulp and paper technology named Kamyr that was located in Karlstad
Karlstad
Karlstad is a city, the seat of Karlstad Municipality, the capital of Värmland County, and the largest city in the province Värmland in Sweden. The city had 61,685 inhabitants in 2010 out of a municipal total that during the first quarter 2010 was 84,885 inhabitants...

, Sweden. Dahl hired Richer to head up the organisation with the specific task to develop and market new technologies for bleaching and other innovations within pulp and paper. Richter then moved with his family to Karlstad.

The inventor and executive

In the middle on the 1930s Kamyr launched their new process for continuous bleaching that was developed and patented by Richter. The company had an immediate success initially in Europe and later worldwide. Kamyr grew quickly and obtained the necessary resources and creditability for new innovations to come.
Richter already had a vision to introduce a process for continuous cooking of pulp. So far this had been done in batches, with its drawback in quality variance and being a barrier to rational nonstop production of paper. So far nobody had even tried to conquer this area and it proved to be way more complicated than with bleaching. It took more than 10 years from the first pilot in 1940 to a fully operational unit. Richter always insisted on full scale testing. “You can fool a man, but not a machine. When the machine is willful, you have to find out why”. The first installation was able to produce 30 tons per day. A Richter digester of today will produce more than 2500 tons per day.
He became the CEO of Kamyr in 1950 while still being directly responsible for Research and Development. In the following years Kamyr obtains more or less a monopoly position as no other supplier was capable of presenting something similar. Paper mills all over the world switched to continuous uninterrupted production of pulp and paper which created considerable savings and a stable quality of the end-product.

Post CEO activity

In 1959 Richter decided to step down as CEO of the company in order to re-focus on the technology. He assumed the title Chief Technical Advisor to the Kamyr Group (now based both in Sweden and the US). He stayed in that role until 1993 (being above 90 years old). One of Richter’s strengths was that he did not regard innovation as a one-off event, but rather a process of improvements. Hence he was able to reach more than 750 patents awarded worldwide. During this period Richter had relocated to France and collaborated with his son, Ole Johan, who was the one “on the location”, building and testing equipment and eventually also adding to the patented solutions.
Johan Richter is relatively unknown to the general public. With his long string of innovations and the creation of a very successful company, he is probably one of Scandinavia’s most respected inventors in the 20th century.

Honours and awards

  • Honorary degree
    Honorary degree
    An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...

     at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology
    Royal Institute of Technology
    The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...

     1977 (KTH), Stockholm (Lista över hedersdoktorer vid KTH Listing of Honourary Doctors In Swedish )
  • Honorary member, Papirindustrins Tekniske Forening, Oslo (The Paper and Pulp association of Norway)
  • Honorary member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences. http://www.ntva.no/english.shtml
  • Knight of the Italian Order of Merit. (Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana)
  • Knight of 1 class in St. Olavs Orden. 1966. Oslo
  • Kungliga Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien (Royal Achedemy of Technical Sciences, Stockholm) IVA. Gold Medal 1963. For groundbreaking development of technologies and methods for the continuous cooking of pulp
  • Several other international medals and orders
  • Inducted in the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame 2009. Paper Valley, Appleton USA

Printed

  • S.L . Lövold m.fl: “Johan Richter. Den moderne celluloseindustrins far (The Father of the modern pulp Industry), ISBN 82-994811-0-4, Kværner ASA, 1998
  • ”Fiberlines, Kvaerner Pulping Publication” nr 1 1999, sidan 6-11
  • Johan Richter: ”The History of Kamyr Continuous Cooking” , 1981

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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