2007 marks 100 years that Dräger first established subsidiary offices in the United States.
The parent company, Drägerwerk Lübeck, was founded in 1889 by Heinrich and Bernhard
Dräger in Lübeck, Germany. At the turn of the century the company was having great success
with its rescue breathing apparatus used by miners and fire brigades in Europe, England and Mexico. And in 1904, Dräger was awarded a gold and a silver medal at the World’s Fair Universal Exposition in St. Louis for their respiratory devices. Mr. Heinrich Dräger’s son
Bernhard(1), along with a Mr. Walter Mingramm(2), established their first American subsidiary
offices at 11 Broadway in New York City in 1907 and within a few months, moved the company to Pittsburgh, PA calling it the Draeger Oxygen Apparatus Company.
The Pittsburgh
offices were located in a building bordering the Monongehla river in downtown at 422 First
Avenue and the building still exists today.
This year also marks the
100th anniversary of the invention of the Dräger Pulmotor, a machine to enable breathing, which along with the creation of the “soda lime cartridge”,
used for scrubbing toxic air within a breathing device, made Dräger’s name famous throughout
the world in 1907.