Om Materialprøvningens Udvikling i Norden
Og om Statsprøveanstaltens Virksomhed

112 person, but accepted an invitation to enter the service of his na- tive-country and in January 1665 he was appointed field-mar- shal and in July general-governor of the duchies and principali- ties of Denmark. But in the long run a warrior who had become grizzled on the battlefield could not feel satisfied at the easy life of such a peaceful time and having obtained discharge from Danish service October 31st 1665 he entered Dutch service. In 1674 he retired to private life and died in Hamburg the night between the 23rd and 24th of March 1676. In M tiller’s Pinakothek vol. XII page 104 (Royal Library) we find the portrait of Würtz. It is rendered on the frontispiece (fig- I)- The Danish States testing Laboratory has wished to begin this essay on »the development of the testing of materials in the North« with drawing away the veil of oblivion from the fact that our native-country has the honour of having given birth to the man who, as far as known, was the first to make experiments on testing of materials for practical purposes. Poul Würtz, whose life otherwise especially belongs to Swe- den, ought to be looked upon as one of the greatest men of the North. II. The Development of the Testing of Materials in Sweden. In the 18111 and 19th centuries it is especially Sweden which among the northern countries has the honour of having attribu- ted lo the development of the testing of materials while in N o r- w a y and F i n 1 a n cl it has been of less importance. In his book »De Ferro« 1734 Swedenborg describes several experiments, for instance bending experiments, which the merchants made when buying Swedish iron. In 1826 Mr. P. Lager hjelm, a Swedish Judge, occasioned comparative experiments on forged and rolled ironbars. The results of the experiments were in 1827 published in the annals of the Swedish »J ä r n k o n t o r«. Of later experiments some of the most important are prob- ably the examinations of railway-materials which Knut Styffe1) Knut Styffe: Om jerns og ståls elasticitet, tänjbarhet och absoluta styrka, Stockholm 1866.