Ivan Kulibin

Ivan Petrovich Kulibin was a Nizhny Novgorod residents. He was born on April 21, 1735, in the settlement of Podnove in Nizhny Novgorod Uyezd, into the family of a small-time Nizhny Novgorod merchant named Pyotr Kulibin, and from an early age he was fascinated by "how everything works inside." In his room he set up a small workshop, where he gathered all the tools then available for metalworking, lathe work, and other trades.

Moreover, his father, who encouraged this passion, made every effort to bring him all the books on physics, chemistry, and the other natural sciences he could find. Gradually, young Vanya came to understand the inner workings of one everyday object after another. There was yet another reason his father "indulged" his son's hobby: the boy could fix mechanisms of any complexity — most often clocks — in a matter of minutes, and when it came to millstones or factory machinery he never let anyone down either. The elder Kulibin shared in his son's fame: "What a son you have, Pyotr — a jack of all trades…"

Before long, word of the young miracle-mechanic spread throughout Nizhny Novgorod. And since Nizhny Novgorod merchants traveled all across Russia and sometimes ventured into Europe and even Asia, news of the gifted prodigy soon reached other cities and regions. The one thing Vanya lacked was decent textbooks — though it should be noted that Russia's first university had opened in Saint Petersburg a mere eleven years before Kulibin was born.

Yet he managed something even greater — he caught the attention of the highest-ranking personages. This happened only in 1764, when Ivan devised a way to fit a clock mechanism inside a case remarkably similar in size to a duck's egg. Every hour a little door would fly open to reveal tiny figures of gold and silver performing a whole show to music. The clock is now kept in the Hermitage Museum. Kulibin presented it to Catherine II in 1769; she was so struck by the master's talent that she appointed him head of the mechanical workshop of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The previous manager — a foreigner — could not do even half of what Kulibin was capable of. Kulibin also assembled the famous Peacock Clock — made by the English craftsman James Cox — on two occasions (in 1792 and 1799); it is permanently on display in the Pavilion Hall of the Small Hermitage.

I. P. Kulibin became a direct successor to the remarkable work of Lomonosov, who had done much to develop the Academy's workshops and paid them particular attention right up to his death in 1765.

I. P. Kulibin worked at the Academy for thirty years. His work was always highly regarded by scholars. A few months after Kulibin began his work at the Academy, Academician Rumovsky examined the "Gregorian telescope" produced by the new mechanic. Following Rumovsky's report, the minutes of the Academic Conference for August 13, 1770, recorded: "…in view of the many great difficulties encountered in making such telescopes, it has been deemed proper to encourage the craftsman Kulibin so that he may continue to make such instruments, for there can be no doubt that he will in a short time bring them to the same perfection to which they have been brought in England."

I. P. Kulibin personally carried out, and supervised the execution of, a very large number of instruments for scientific observation and experiment. An enormous variety of apparatus passed through his hands: "hydrodynamic instruments," "instruments for conducting mechanical experiments," optical and acoustic instruments, drawing sets, astrolabes, telescopes, spyglasses, microscopes, "electric jars," sundials and other clocks, spirit levels, precision balances, and much else besides. The "instrument-making, lathe, metalworking, and barometer chambers" operating under I. P. Kulibin's direction supplied scientists and all of Russia with the most varied instruments. "Made by Kulibin" — this mark could be placed on a considerable number of the scientific instruments then in circulation in Russia.

The numerous instruction manuals he compiled taught people how to handle even the most complex instruments and how to obtain the most accurate readings from them.

"Description of How to Keep an Electrical Machine in Proper Working Order," written by I. P. Kulibin, is just one example of how he trained people in the conduct of scientific experiments. The "Description" was written for academicians carrying out experimental research into electrical phenomena. It is composed simply, clearly, and in a strictly scientific manner. I. P. Kulibin set out all the basic rules for operating the device, methods for correcting faults, and techniques for ensuring the most effective performance of the instrument.

In addition to instruction manuals, I. P. Kulibin also compiled scientific descriptions of instruments, such as: "Description of an Astronomical Perspective of 6 Inches, Which Magnifies Thirty Times and Will Accordingly Show the Moons of Jupiter Clearly."

In the course of his varied work, I. P. Kulibin constantly attended to the training of his pupils and assistants, among whom special mention should be made of his Nizhny Novgorod assistant Sherstnevsky, the opticians the Belyaevs, the metalworker Yegorov, and his closest associate Kesarev.

I. P. Kulibin established at the Academy what was, for its time, a model facility for the production of physical and other scientific instruments. The modest Nizhny Novgorod mechanic rose to one of the foremost positions in the development of Russian instrument-making technology.

But civil engineering, transport, communications, agriculture, and other fields also preserve remarkable evidence of his creative genius. I. P. Kulibin's outstanding bridge-building projects, which far surpassed anything known to the world practice of his day, gained him wide renown.

In the first years of his time in Saint Petersburg, Ivan Petrovich was engaged in genuine creative work, all the more so because working under his direction were craftsmen as brilliant as himself: the instrument-maker Pyotr Kosarev and the opticians of the Belyaev family. Inventions poured forth as if from a horn of plenty: new instruments and "all manner of machines that… are useful in civil and military architecture and otherwise."

Here is only a partial list of the things that amazed his contemporaries: precision balances, marine compasses, sophisticated achromatic telescopes that replaced the simple Gregorian ones, and even an achromatic microscope. Foreigners were simply astonished when they saw these instruments. At that time, enlightened Europe possessed no tools or equipment for, say, boring and finishing the inner surface of cylinders.

In practice, however, Ivan Petrovich was not really allowed to work properly, since commissions from the Empress and courtiers of every stripe sometimes tripped over one another. For Catherine II, Kulibin invented a special lift to carry the stout empress; for Potemkin — an enthusiast of loud and colorful fireworks — he produced such wonders of pyrotechnics that the Chinese, the originators of that art, might have been proud of them.

One should not think, however, that Kulibin occupied himself only with trinkets. For instance, it was he who helped solve one of the most pressing problems of the age: bridges. In the mid-eighteenth century they were ill-suited to the passage of vessels. And this problem the self-taught mechanic solved not only in Saint Petersburg but also for London. And, with characteristic Russian magnanimity, he declined the fee for the "London Bridge" project: it was enough that all this had been achieved by a native Russian talent.

Relations between Ivan Petrovich and the courtiers were not always smooth. Potemkin, for instance, had long dreamed of stripping the kaftan from Kulibin's back, making him shave his beard, and parading him around Europe while basking in the reflected glory of his fame. But he met his match — the talented mechanic flatly refused to part with that genuine emblem of the Russian common man, and showed no eagerness to be draped in silks either. Potemkin responded in kind: he began making trouble at every turn, working to ensure that Kulibin's labors were valued at next to nothing.

Even worse treatment awaited the master at the hands of Paul I, who came to power after Catherine's death. He set about erasing from the memory of his contemporaries everything connected with his mother's name. Kulibin was among the first to grasp this. He did not cling to the Academy of Sciences, where he had spent thirty-two uninterrupted years, but packed his things and returned to his homeland, Nizhny Novgorod.

He was no longer young — a sixty-one-year-old mechanic — but he retained his clarity of mind, keen eye, and steady hand. He continued to invent, though the scale on which his new projects were realized became considerably smaller. Kulibin gave his inventions freely to people out of sheer generosity, and cunning foreigners later mounted a real hunt for the master's drawings and claimed his most celebrated inventions as their own.

Would you like examples? By all means. The optical telegraph invented by Kulibin would be purchased by the tsarist government from the French thirty-five years after the event described here. Kulibin's three-wheeled self-propelled carriage, complete with flywheel, brake, and gearbox, would, a century later, form the basis of the running gear of Karl Benz's automobile. The "mechanical leg" he created for an officer who had lost his limb during the storming of Ochakov would form the basis of modern prosthetics. The same applies to his invention of the rope-polygon method, without which the elegant yet immensely strong suspension bridges of today would not exist. And more still: the ideas expressed by Kulibin in the nineteenth century underlie the construction of the famous Beijing "Bird's Nest" stadium, where Olympic athletes compete today.

Civil engineering, transport, communications, agriculture, and other fields preserve remarkable evidence of his creative genius. I. P. Kulibin's outstanding bridge-building projects, which far surpassed anything known to the world practice of his day, gained him wide renown.

I. P. Kulibin drew attention to the inconveniences caused by the absence, in his time, of permanent bridges across the Neva River. After several preliminary proposals, in 1776 he developed a design for a single-span arched bridge over the Neva. The span of the arch was 298 meters. The arch was designed from 12,908 wooden elements fastened together with 49,650 iron bolts and 5,500 square iron clamps. However, Paul I paid no due attention to this sound project.

In 1813, after yet another change of power in the country, I. P. Kulibin completed a design for an iron bridge over the Neva. Addressing a petition to Emperor Alexander I, he wrote of the beauty and grandeur of St. Petersburg and noted: "All that is lacking is a permanent bridge across the Neva River, without which the inhabitants suffer great inconveniences and difficulties in spring and autumn, and not infrequently even loss of life."

The construction of a bridge consisting of three lattice arches resting on four piers would require up to one million poods of iron. Special drawbridge sections were planned to allow vessels to pass through. The design took everything into account, down to the bridge's lighting and protection during the spring ice drift.


The construction of Kulibin's bridge — a design whose boldness astonishes even engineers of our own day — proved beyond the means of his era.

The celebrated Russian bridge-builder D. I. Zhuravsky, as quoted by Prof. A. Yershov ("On the Significance of Mechanical Art in Russia," Vestnik Promyshlennosti, 1859, No. 3), assessed the model of Kulibin's bridge as follows: "It bears the stamp of genius; it is built on a system recognized by modern science as the most rational; the bridge is supported by an arch, whose deflection is prevented by a diagonal bracing system which, because of ignorance of what is done in Russia, is called the American system." Kulibin's wooden bridge has to this day remained unsurpassed in the field of wooden bridge construction.

Aware of the exceptional importance of rapid communications for a country as vast as Russia, I. P. Kulibin began developing a semaphore telegraph project in 1794. He solved the problem brilliantly and also devised an original code for transmissions. Yet only forty years after Kulibin's invention were the first optical telegraph lines established in Russia. By that time, I. P. Kulibin's design had been forgotten, and the government paid one hundred and twenty thousand rubles to Chappe for a "secret" imported from France to set up a less efficient telegraph.

Equally sad is the fate of yet another of the great daring ventures of this remarkable innovator, who developed a method of moving vessels upstream by harnessing the force of the current itself. The "Vodokhod" (water-walker) — as Kulibin's vessel was named — was successfully tested in 1782. In 1804, following the testing of another of Kulibin's "vodokhods," his vessel was officially recognized as "promising great benefits to the state." But matters progressed no further than official recognition; it all ended with Kulibin's vessel being sold at auction for scrap. And yet the designs and the vessels themselves were both original and economically sound, as the inventor himself demonstrated first and foremost in his own written works: "Description of the Benefits That May Be Derived from Machine-Powered Vessels on the Volga River, Invented by Kulibin" and "Description of What Benefit the Treasury and Society May Derive from Machine-Powered Vessels on the Volga River According to Approximate Calculations, and Especially with Regard to the Rising Costs of Hired Labor Compared with Previous Years."

The thorough, sober calculations produced by I. P. Kulibin mark him as an outstanding economist. At the same time, they reveal in him a man who devoted all his strength and thought to the good of his homeland.

The finest minds of the age held I. P. Kulibin's gifts in high esteem. The celebrated scholar Leonhard Euler considered him a genius. There survives an account of a meeting between Suvorov and Kulibin at a grand celebration held by Potemkin:


« As soon as Suvorov caught sight of Kulibin at the far end of the hall, he strode quickly toward him, stopped a few paces away, made a deep bow, and said:

— To your mercy! Then, stepping yet closer to Kulibin, he bowed still lower and said: — To your honor! Finally, drawing right up to Kulibin, he bowed from the waist and added: — To your great wisdom, my respects! He then took Kulibin by the hand, inquired after his health, and, turning to the whole gathering, declared: — God be praised, what a mind! He will invent us a flying carpet!

»


Thus did the immortal Suvorov pay tribute, in the person of Ivan Petrovich Kulibin, to the great creative power of the Russian people.

The vast majority of Kulibin's inventions, whose practicality our own time has confirmed, were never realized in his day. Curious automata, amusing toys, ingenious fireworks for high-born crowds — that was all that impressed his contemporaries.

An indefatigable innovator in his work, Kulibin was conservative in his domestic habits and ways. He never smoked tobacco and never played cards. He wrote poetry. He enjoyed dinner parties, though at them he only joked and bantered, since he was a complete teetotaler. At court, amid embroidered uniforms of Western cut, Kulibin in his long kaftan, high boots, and full beard looked like a visitor from another world. Yet at balls he parried mockery with inexhaustible wit, winning people over with his good-natured talkativeness and the innate dignity of his bearing.

Kulibin was married three times; his third marriage took place when he was already seventy, and his third wife bore him three daughters. He had twelve children in all, of both sexes. He gave all his sons an education.

Today in Russia the name "Kulibin" has become a common noun. It is used to describe self-taught craftsmen who have achieved great success in their trade. The word "kulibins," with varying degrees of irony, is applied to enthusiasts who like to modify or improve machines and mechanisms on their own. The word can also acquire a negative connotation when referring to a tendency among domestic specialists to tinker with existing, time-tested technology; phrases such as "keep the kulibins away from it" are possible.

Kulibin's Legacy in Russia

  • Streets in several cities bear Kulibin's name. In Saint Petersburg there is a Kulibin Square.
  • A cruise ship of Project 26-37, which sails routes along the Volga River, bears the name Ivan Kulibin.

Legacy in Nizhny Novgorod

See also