Burmeister & Wain

Burmeister & Wain was a large established Danish shipyard and leading diesel engine producer headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The company still maintains operations at three main sites in Denmark for manufacturing, servicing, and licensing of its two-stroke engines and complete propulsion systems.

Hans Heinrich Baumgarten (1806–1875) was from the town of Halstenbek near Pinneberg, in the Duchy of Holstein, an area of Germany that was then under the rule of the king of Denmark.

Later he was a carpenter before becoming a machine minder at the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende, whose printing office he later worked for in Berlin.

Shortly thereafter, in 1843 he was granted a Danish Royal Charter and what would later become Burmeister & Wain was launched with the opening of a mechanical workshop in Copenhagen.

The son of a cook and restaurant keeper, he studied at the Polytechnical Institute in Copenhagen from 1836 to 1846, now the Technical University of Denmark.

At this point, Baumgarten, as the first founder, became a director of the board of what he would see become Burmeister & Wain Maskin- og Skibsbyggeri (Engineering and Shipbuilding) in 1880.

[4] In 1881 B&W bought the patent for a milk separator from Peterson Brothers[5] and by 1905 produced a range of dairy equipment,[6] employing about 3,000 staff in their 'Perfect' works in Copenhagen.

1911-1912 saw the world's first ever ocean-going diesel-powered ship, M/S Selandia, start her maiden voyage from Copenhagen to Bangkok with two B&W four-stroke main engines (furnishing a total of 2,500 hp).

The electronically controlled line of ME diesel two-stroke engines was added in 2002 with a maximum cylinder bore of 108 cm.

MAN B&W Diesel, Denmark, employed approximately 2,200 at the end of 2003 and had 100 million kW, or more than 8000 MC engines, in service or on order by 2004.