Dräger celebrates 100 year anniversary

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.