2007 marks 100 years that Dräger first established subsidiary offices in the United States. The parent
company, Drägerwerk Lübeck, was founded in 1889 by Heinrich and Bernhard Dräger in Lübeck, Germany. At the turn of the century the company was having great success with its rescue breathing apparatus used by miners and fire brigades in Europe, England and Mexico. And in 1904, Dräger was awarded a gold and a silver medal at the World’s Fair Universal Exposition in St. Louis for their respiratory devices. Mr. Heinrich Dräger’s son Bernhard(1), along with a Mr. Walter Mingramm(2), established their first American subsidiary offices at 11 Broadway in New York City in 1907 and within a few months, moved the company to Pittsburgh, PA calling it the Draeger Oxygen Apparatus Company. The Pittsburgh offices were located in a building bordering the Monongehla river in downtown at 422 First Avenue and the building still exists today.This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the invention of the Dräger Pulmotor®, a machine to enable
breathing, which along with the creation of the “soda lime cartridge”, used for scrubbing toxic air within a breathing device, made Dräger’s name famous throughout the world in 1907.(3)Emergence of the Drägermen-During the first decade of the twentieth century, mine rescue teams across Germany, England and Mexico and even mountaineering rescue squads in England, became accustomed to the reliability and performance of using their Dräger breathing apparatus. Word spread quickly about the great success of the breathing devices due to their use in the harsh environments of underground mines, in high altitudes and from news of the esteemed awards given Dräger for the apparatuses at the St. Louis world’s fair. “Many heroic deeds were being performed in our apparatus”, wrote Heinrich Dräger in 1913. It was during these early years that the mine rescue men using the apparatus were being called “Drägermen”, quite possibly coined by a newspaper reporter.
Ever since, the name “DrägerMan®” has been synonymous with mine rescue teams worldwide and in the last few decades it has carried over to those firefighters wearing a Dräger breathing apparatus. One industry taking notice of the Dräger apparatus was the American fire service because they too could use dependable breathing protection against smoke and fumes when fighting fires and Dräger’s technology was deemed revolutionary.From 1913 through 1918, two American city fire departments began equipping their firefighters with the Dräger breathing apparatus- New York and Pittsburgh. Today, both cities are still using Dräger self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). An elite group of NYFD firefighters use the Dräger BG-4 four-hour breathing apparatus for incident response, subway/tunnel rescues and high-rise building fires. The Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire has been using theDräger AirBoss SCBAs for ten years 24/7 without any performance failures! Now, all across America from
the Anchorage, Alaska FD to the Miami, FL FD, somewhere there are firefighters wearing Dräger SCBAs any given minute of every day.Today, Dräger’s world headquarters remain located in Lübeck, Germany and are managed by the fifth generation of the Dräger family- Stefan Dräger. Drägerwerk AG’s two primary subgroups are Dräger Safety and Dräger Medical having 9,700 combined employees, with representation on all continents in over 190 countries and subsidiaries in almost 50. Revenue for fiscal 2005 was 1.7 billion EURO (approx. 2.2 billion dollars). The North American headquarters of Dräger Safety are located in Pittsburgh, PA near the Pittsburgh international airport having over 200 employees in the NAFTA region. Since 1999, Wesley J. Kenneweg has served as president & CEO of the NAFTA region operations. He is a native of the Pittsburgh area and has served in various executive management capacities for Dräger throughout the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Asia Pacific since 1983.Dräger Safety’s primary markets include fire service, underground mining, industrial safety and hygiene,
military, first responders, and petro/chemical operations.In addition to gas detection/monitoring products, Dräger Safety is focused on the fire service and first responder industry, here and abroad, with a line-up of the most dependable preferred brand of respiratory protection equipment. From filtering contaminated or toxic air through the most comfortable and most effective filter masks, to escape hoods, to self-contained breathing apparatus ranging in durations of five minutes to four hours. To date, more than 1 million Dräger SCBAs have been put into service worldwide making Dräger the world’s largest manufacturer of engineered respiratory protection equipment. Dräger Safety continually collaborates with several fire departments, small and large, to develop new product innovations like customized adjustable backplates that take into consideration the height differences between all types of firefighters. Dräger’s low profile lung demand regulators streamline the self contained breathing apparatus and Dräger’s X-plore line of masks and
filters provide optimum comfort and safety. Their CBRN approved equipment protects users in all types of harsh environments.Along with an innovative line of respiratory protection and personal gas detection monitors, Dräger excels in fire fighter training. Draeger Safety Systems was recently established which combined Dräger’s existing mobile training galleries, Swede Survival Flashover Systems and Fire Training Systems (FTS Canada) to create one of the world’s largest fire fighter training services company. Dräger now offers a complete line of safe, realistic, reliable and approved live fire simulators and fire training systems for all types of fire fighting conditions. From small portable fire training units for fire extinguisher training, to large full intensity interior and exterior simulators and flashover systems, a full selection of fixed and mobile fires are available complementing the training objectives of municipal, industrial, marine, airport and military fire services. With live fire systems, mobile training centers and controlled fire training for various es of fires, Dräger is the training leader. Their live fire systems provide knowledge for fire
fighters to observe first hand fire behavior and learn how to react during flashovers. Their mobile training galleries provide a safe scenario where fire fighters learn and gain confidence in their equipment. And the Fire Training Systems show how to work together asa team to fight the various types of fires that occur.In addition to training, Dräger leads in Emergency Responder products and services. Dräger Safety in North America maintains an Emergency Operations Program effective 24/7 to strategically support and service any emergency or rescue operation for miners, fire fighters and first responders.Dräger medical and safety technologies produce innovative products designed to monitor, support and protect human life. They create better and safer conditions for both personal health and the environment. Hence the Dräger motto Technology for Life®. Wherever human respiration is difficult or endangered,
Dräger seeks and pioneers a solution.“For a century, it has been our passion to continuously improve the understanding of our customers in their different fields and job safety requirements,” states Wes Kenneweg, President of Draeger Safety, Inc. He added, “our customers can rest assured that we’ll be a loyal, reliable partner that understands their changing needs. Through constant R&Dinvestment and the utmost manufacturing technologies, we’ll provide respiratory protection and gas detection/monitoring instruments so they can work more effectively, more efficiently- and more safely.”________________________(1) In 1904 Bernhard Dräger corrected the values for human breathing requirements and carbon dioxide requirements. The values which until then had been generally assumed to be correct were in fact totally inadequate. The 1904/09 model Dräger respiratory protective device set standards in the field of mine rescue.(2) Extract from the 1913 memoirs of Heinrich Dräger…“In 1906, our beer machine company had been visited by a young gentleman from Mexico. He was a partner in a Mexican company named Holbrügge, and had been born in Hamburg, Germany. The company had placed an order with our firm for beer machines. Once our business was done, I took our guest to our Lübeck factory and showed him our rescue apparatus. Mr. Mingramm- as the gentleman was called- was highly enthusiastic and climbed straight into the apparatus to work inside. Once he had familiarized himself with it, he arranged for one such apparatus and the necessary accessories to be packaged up and traveled back to Mexico with them. A little while later, the orders started coming in. Around nine months later, Mr. Mingramm reappeared on the scene and explained: “I used my journey from here to Mexico to familiarize myself with the rescue apparatus, undertaking constant practical exercises. Once I was back home, I hired a few people, purchased some mules, and set off to visit the mines. And you know how successful this was from our orders. Never in my life have I done such a good business deal as this. I am here now to negotiate with you about an agency in the United States.”(3) During the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the Dräger Pulmotor became synonymous with a respirator which, for the first time, employed oxygen not only to treat patients and to rescue the injured, but also utilized the pressure of the gas for automatic operation of the device. In the Soda Lime Cartridge, large quantities of exhaled carbon dioxide are bonded in an extremely small space, thus helping the user to survive.For more informatin, contact:Shelli Cosmides, Draeger Safety, Inc.101 Technology DrivePittsburgh, PA 15275Pheon: (412) 788-5671Email: Shelli.Cosmides@draeger.comwww.draeger.com
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