Biography of the Mozhaisk inventor

Years of teaching Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaisky was born in the family of a sailor. The whole life of his father, Fedor Timofeevich Mozhaisky, was connected with the sea. In the year, ten years after the end of the Marine Corps in St. Petersburg, the twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant Fedor Mozhaisky was appointed assistant pilot-capitan in the naval crew. The basis of the crew was a small town of Rossalm in the Vyborg province.

This town is memorable in the history of the Russian fleet: near it on August 13, a marine battle took place between the Swedish and Russian squadrons, which ended with the defeat of the Swedes. Before the smallest details, Fedor Mozhaisky was studied among the countless rocky islands stretching along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland. It took place only a year after the appointment of Mozhaysky in Rossalm, and he had already received a ship into an independent command, which had to train pilots to the difficult art of swimming in the Finnish sabers.

He, the future creator of the world's first aircraft, has entered into life that year when the Decembrist uprising occurred. The long thirty years of the reign of Nicholas I, nicknamed the gendarme of Europe, fell like a heavy oppression on the shoulders of Russia. It was in these difficult years that it was necessary to grow, study, and start his service in the Navy Alexander Mozhaisky.

A year later, Mozhaysky had another boy who was called Nikolai. And four years later, the wife of Fedor Timofeevich gave birth to a third son, who was named Timothy in honor of his grandfather. In the year, Fedor Timofeevich was promoted to captain-lieutenants and appointed the captain of the Arkhangelsk port. From the Baltic, the Mozhaisk family moved to the White Sea.

By that time, Alexander, in addition to two brothers, had sisters: Catherine and Julia. The marine business was the profession of his father, and Fedor Timofeevich forgave his sons to the marine service. When the eldest son was ten years old, his parents brought him to St. Petersburg and gave him to study at the Sea Cadet Corps. The list of candidates of the Marine Cadet Corps preserved the names of the two Mozhaisky brothers: Alexander, who was born on March 9 and Nikolai, [6] born on May 23.

The Marine Cadet Corps occupied a huge building on the banks of the Neva, between the lines of the Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg. Today, just like a hundred years ago, the walls of the case are painted yellow. White columns give the building a strict and solemn appearance. From a distance, a metal tower and a mast on the roof is noticeable. They remind of the sea, and when during the festivities on the mast they raise flags of coloring, the building seems to be a huge ship ready for sailing.

Before this building, where the Higher Naval School named after M. Bronze figure of Admiral Kruzenshtern is now placed in a marine uniform and rises with a cortle on a granite pedestal. The face of the illustrious sailor is addressed to the school, which he headed for fifteen years, and where Soviet naval officers are now brought up. In the year, when Alexander Mozhaisky was brought to St.

Petersburg, there was no tower, nor a mast on the building, nor a monument on the embankment. In that year, when Alexander Mozhaisky entered the corps, Admiral Ivan Fedorovich Kruzenshtern [7] walked for the seventh decades, and he was the director of the Sea Cadet Corps.

Already in those days, this Marine School was one of the oldest in Russia. Peter I signed a decree on its opening on January 14. True, at first it was called the Navigan school. Then at the school they taught “arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, flat navigation, mercatorship navigation, spherics, astronomy, mathematical geography and the conduct of a gear shift journal.” The Navigatskaya school was placed in Moscow, in the building of the Sukharev tower.

In the year, Peter transferred the Navigatsky school to the young capital and created the Marine Academy in St. Petersburg. Peter approved the program of the Maritime Academy, in which they were supposed to “teach sciences, arithmetic, geometry, navigation, artillery, fortification, geography, draw painting and military training, muskets and raids, and some astronomy.” The development of the fleet Peter I considered it a very important matter.

The creation of the Navigatsky school, its transfer to St. Petersburg, transformation to the Marine Academy - all this is evidence of attention that Peter paid to the training of qualified fleet officers. With the successors of Peter, unable to continue the case of the transformation of Russia, the development of the fleet has slowed down, and the training of the sailors worsened.

In the year, the Academy was renamed the Marine Shortion Corps, where they cared about the Mushtra. The notes of [8] of one of the participants in the December uprising of the year have survived to this day, which, recalling the years of teaching in the Marine Corps, writes about the rudeness and ignorance of teachers, about the beatings, about wild, barracks who reigned in the corps.

Since the beginning of the 19th century, Kartsev was appointed director of the Maritime Corps, who previously served in Kronstadt with the rank of lieutenant colonel. The new director did not like the fleet, did not understand the sciences and, as one historian put it, "although he ruled the Naval Cadet Corps for almost 25 years, he rarely visited the corps."However, these rare visits did not prevent Kartsev from impregnating the corps with the Arakcheev spirit, stick discipline, wearing people to think and forcing them only to obey.

Kruzenshtern became the director of the corps in the year. An excellent sailor, he knew and loved sea business; He understood that the growth of the fleet, the complication of its technology, the emergence of a steam engine on ships requires a radical restructuring of the whole case of training marine officers. Kruzenshtern achieved the creation of an officer class in the marine corps.

From each issue, six to eight excellent students went to the officer class. For two years, future officers listened to lectures on higher mathematics, astronomy and theory of shipbuilding. These were the best forces of the Russian science of that era, its pride and glory. Most of them were members of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Academics invited by Kruzenshtern expanded and deepened their subjects.

Their programs were so extensive that they gave a reason to the famous German natural scientist Alexander Humboldt, who visited Russia in the year, to say half-joking: “How happy I would be if I could know everything that the Russian cadet knows.” Of course, the Russian cadets did not learn everything that was written in these curricula. The Nikolaev regime remained in the opponent, afraid of the enemy of the enlightenment, and attempts at advanced people to develop science, to improve teaching did not find support.

Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaisky, having been in six years in the Marine Corps, studied: navigation, astronomy, theoretical mechanics, drawing geometry, geodesy, fortification, sea tactics, marine practice, shipbuilding theory, ship architecture and French. The fact that new sciences at that time - drawing geometry, shipbuilding theory and ship architecture have introduced into the curriculum, suggests that the Marine Corps prepared not only ships commanders, but technically educated officers who could successfully work in the field of designing ships.

Two more years of practical swimming on sailing military vessels of the Baltic Fleet were coming. Thus began the marine service of Alexander Mozhaisk, which, with the exception of several short breaks, gave most of his life. Difficult and, at the same time, glorious naval service! The young officer was sent to Arkhangelsk. There lived his father, mother, sisters. In Arkhangelsk, at the mouth of a large, multi -water river, there was a conveniently located shipyard.

The northern forests were rich in stocks of wood. Pomors, born sailors, descendants of fearless Novgorodians, who went on fragile ships to the New Earth and to Grumant, Spitsbergen with a stern, jelly Barents Sea, were famous as skilled ship masters. At the beginning of the XIX century, in the era, when a wooden shipbuilding was still dominated by, the Arkhangelsk shipyard retained its significance.

The frigates, on which Gardemarin Alexander Mozhaisky began his naval service, were built at the Arkhangelsk shipyard. At that time, it was easier to distill the ship built in Arkhangelsk by sea to the Baltic, than to take a ship's forest in [11] Petersburg. Yes, and the distant swimming itself was beneficial to the sailors. The track record of Alexander Fedorovich sparingly talks about his life of that time: in the year Mozhaisky made a transition on the 74 -gun ship "Ingermanland" from the White Sea to the Baltic; A year later, he again cruised along the White Sea on the schooner "Rainbow"; In the year, on the same schooner, he made his second transition from the White Sea to the Baltic.

The years of marine service, swimming in the White, Barents, Norwegian, North and Baltic seas tempered the will of the young sailor, and school knowledge multiplied by practical experience. In the first half of the last century, the Russian navy remained almost entirely sailing. Brigantines, Shnyava, boats are old, now almost forgotten words. They wake up the images of sailing, white -winged ships cutting the wave with a slender hull, firmly sewn from a persistent, strong larch.

The largest ships were called linear, because during the battle they lined up in one line. Frigates are the first rank cruisers, high -speed three -masted ships, with strong weapons, reaching, sometimes up to 80 guns. Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaisk turned twenty -five years old when he was promoted to lieutenants. Then there were no title of younger and senior lieutenants in the Navy: the lieutenant was directly followed by the captain-lieutenant, the captain of the 2nd rank, captain of the 2nd rank.

First, on a small one, the same as the "Rainbow", the 16 -butcher School "Meteor"; then on the large cannon ship "Vola", the length of the case of which was 60 m; Finally, on the ship “Memory of Azov” - the brother of Ingermanland, the new, who has just come from Arkhangelsk. These were the last years of the existence of a military sailing fleet. New steam ships were replaced by sailing.

However, the new technique - a steam engine - slowly, very slowly introduced in the fleet. For more than thirty years, steam ships have been built in Russia.Back in the year, a balancer steam machine was put on an ordinary barge with a capacity of only 4 liters. Two large, wide on -board wheels were located closer to the nose of the steamer. The smoke from the boiler came out of the brick pipe.

Three years later, in the year, at the Izhora plant, the first military ship “Smory” was built for the Russian fleet, with a 22 -liter steam machine with a capacity of 22 liters. However, vertical steam vehicles with balancers were extremely heavy and bulky. In England, they tried to create a shackle steam engine, but unsuccessfully. Such a car was first created at the Izhora plant in the year [13] Russian engineers.

It was intended for the steamer "Hercules" and developed power in l. The creation of the world's world's first shipbalance steam machine was an important event and, undoubtedly, accelerated the spread of steam equipment in the fleet. All the first steamboats, including the military, were wheeled. The idea of ​​using the screw as the creator of the traction - or as they often say, the movement - came, apparently, in the year.

This year, the first Russian screw military ship Archimedes was launched, which opened a new stage in the construction of warships. Already in the first years of his maritime service, Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaisky attracted attention as a technically educated, highly disciplined, demanding officer for himself and to subordinate, it was precisely such people who needed a new technique - a steam engine.

Probably in the year these circumstances influenced the appointment of Mozhaysky as part of the crew of one of the first Russian military steamers “zealous”, launched in the year. This wheel steamer had a car with a capacity of 60 liters. During the annual voyage on the “zealous”, Mozhaisky got acquainted with the engine that had the strongest influence on the entire development of industry, transport and military shipbuilding of the 19th century and, in fact, until the end of the century remained the only type of engine, on the basis of which it was possible to solve the problem of flying by air.

From the experience of swimming, Mozhaisky made excellent knowledge of the properties of the sail.