Gustaf Dalén Biography

Gustaf Dalén was a Swedish Nobel Laureate who invented automatic regulators, AGA cooker and the Dalén light, among others. An engineer cum industrialist, he was also the founder of the AGA company, an industrial gas company that was later integrated into Linde AG. Best remembered as the inventor of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys, he became known as "the benefactor of sailors." He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1912 for this work. Born as the son of a farmer, he joined a School of Agriculture to study dairy farming as a young man. He invented a milk-fat tester to measure the quality of the milk which he showed to the prominent inventor Gustaf de Laval who advised Dalén to pursue a career in engineering. He thus proceeded to study engineering at the Chalmers University of Technology, and later at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He made many inventions over the course of his engineering career and performed vital work while engaged with the Gas Accumulator Company, which marketed acetylene gas. At that period, there was a growing need for maritime communication facilities and his invention of what came to be known as the Dalén light revolutionized maritime navigation by improving the effectiveness of lighthouses.