Viktor Kaplan

Kaplan was born in Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Austria into a railroad worker's family.

After working in Vienna with a specialisation in motors, he moved to the German Technical University in Brno to conduct research at the institute of civil engineering.

He spent the next three decades of his life in Brno, and nearly all his inventions and research are connected with his professorship there.

In 1912 he published his most notable work: the Kaplan turbine, a revolutionary water turbine that was especially fitted to produce electricity from large streams with only a moderate incline.

In 1918 the first Kaplan turbine with 26 kW power and a diameter of 60 cm was built by the Storek construction company for a textile manufacturer in Lower Austria.