Friedrich Harkort

Friedrich Harkort (February 22, 1793, Hagen - March 6, 1880), known as the "Father of the Ruhr," was an early prominent German industrialist and pioneer of industrial development in the Ruhr region.

[1] In 1819, he founded the first industrial workshop at Castle Wetter.

An early proponent of railroads, he proposed the construction of a railway line from Cologne to Minden in 1825, which eventuated as the Cologne-Minden trunk line, completed in 1847.

In 1826 he built a small test track, as a monorail following a design of the Englishman Henry Robinson Palmer.

This German business-related biographical article is a stub.