The 22-year-old Lothar Faber returned home on his father’s death in 1839. With a strong will he followed an ambitious goal: “to rise to the highest position by making the best that can be made anywhere in the world”. He modernized the production plant and secured first-class raw material from a graphite mine in Siberia. He placed great store by top quality and exclusive presentation of his products, stamped “A.W. Faber” – and so the first brand-name writing implement came into being.
· The young Louis Braille devises his alphabet for the blind in the 1820s
· Georg Simon Ohm, born in nearby Erlangen in 1789, formulates his law of electrical resistance in 1826
· American civil war 1861-65