Edmund Rumpler

Edmund Elias Rumpler (1872 to 1940) was an Austrian automobile and aircraft designer, born in Vienna, who worked mainly in Germany. An automotive engineer by training, he collaborated with Hans Ledwinka on the first Tatra car, the Präsident of 1897. In 1902 he left Daimler to become technical director of Adler, where he designed the first German engine built with engine and gearbox as one unit, and in 1903 he patented a swing axle rear suspension. Turning to aviation, he became in 1910 the first aircraft manufacturer in Germany, and in 1911 he took Melli Beese on as a student pilot. After the First World War he applied aircraft streamlining to a car, the Tropfenwagen, shown to acclaim at the 1921 Berlin Auto Show, whose drag coefficient of 0.28 was measured in 1979. Because he was Jewish he was imprisoned after 1933 and his career was ruined; he died in Züsow, Germany, in 1940.