Gustaf Dalén

Gustaf Dalén married his childhood sweetheart, Elma Persson, in 1901. They had four children, two daughters and two sons.

He was blinded in an acetylene explosion during an experiment in 1912. However, he did not let his disability interfere with his scientific pursuits and remained active in research till the end of his life.

He suffered from cancer towards the end of his life and died on 9 December 1937, at the age of 68.

Nils Gustaf Dalén was born on 30 November 1869, in Stenstorp, Västergötland, Sweden into a farming family as one of the five children of Anders Johannson and his wife, Lovisa Andersdotter Dalén. All of the children adopted their mother's maiden name.

He displayed an aptitude for inventing from a young age. As a young boy, he developed an automatic threshing machine powered by an old spinning wheel.

After his preliminary education, he entered a School of Agriculture to study dairy farming. During this time he also worked on the family farm which he expanded to include a market garden and a dairy.

He invented a milk-fat tester to measure the quality of milk in 1892. He showed this invention to the prominent inventor Gustaf de Laval who recognized the young man’s potential and advised him to pursue a career in engineering.

After selling his farm, Dalén enrolled at the Chalmer's Institute of Technology in Göteborg and graduated as an engineer in 1896. Following this he spent a year in Zurich, Switzerland, studying at the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

He returned to Sweden on the completion of his studies and worked at the de Laval Steam Turbine Company in Stockholm for a short period of time. There he helped develop hot air turbines, compressors, and air pumps.

He collaborated with a former classmate Henrik Celsning to form a partnership in 1900. Through this firm the duo marketed their inventions, one of the major ones being the creation of the Brilliant gasworks, which they sold to the town of Ängelholm.

In 1901, he was appointed as the Technical Chief of the Svenska Karbid- och Acetylen A.B. (Swedish Carbide and Acetylene, Ltd.). A few years later, he accepted the position of Chief Engineer at the Gas Accumulator Company (manufacturer and distributor of acetylene) in 1906.

In 1909, the company was renamed Svenska Aktiebolaget Gasaccumulator (AGA) and Dalén was promoted to the position of Managing Director. During this period, Sweden was experiencing an increasing need for better maritime communication methods. The lighthouse technologies available at that time were not up to the mark and Dalén began his work on developing automatic flashing beacons for lighthouses.

Over the course of his work, he experimented with acetylene, an extremely explosive hydrocarbon gas that could be used as a fuel in lighthouse illuminations. Using this new fuel, he developed the Dalén light which also made use of another one of his inventions, the sun valve. On the basis of his works, AGA started producing lighthouse equipment that worked without any type of electric supply and was thus extremely reliable.

Gustaf Dalén revolutionized maritime navigation with his contributions to lighthouse technology. His inventions, the sun valve and the Dalén light, enabled the production of highly efficient and reliable lighthouse equipment that worked without any type of electric supply.