Windkessel literally means air chamber and is a German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 translation of a concept described previousy by Stephen Hales

Stephen Hales

Stephen Hales, FRS was an English physiologist, chemist and inventor.Hales studied the role of air and water in the maintenance of both plant and animal life. He gave accurate accounts of the movements of water in plants, and demonstrated that plants absorb air...

, who likened the effect of the elastic arteries in dampening the arterial pulse to that of an air chamber in some 18th century fire engines . Otto Frank (physiologist)

Otto Frank (physiologist)

Otto Frank was a German doctor and an important figure in the history of cardiac physiology.-Family and early life:...

 an influential German physiologist developed the concept and provided a firm mathematical foundation; consequently the phenomenon has become widely known as the Windkessel effect

Windkessel effect

Windkessel effect is a term used in medicine to account for the shape of the arterial pressure waveform in terms of the interaction between the stroke volume and the compliance of the aorta and large elastic arteries . Windkessel in German literally means 'air chamber', but is generally taken to...

.