DAMPA_75_years_of_quiet_design_ENG - Flipbook - Page 79
The conversion of the factory in Tommerup was overseen by
an engineer named Erik Bahnsen who was transferred from
the existing Sankt Klemens facility. Domiciled in a house
next door and given an old Volkswagen car as a drivearound, he set about installing and suitably modifying aluminium cutting, profiling and perforating machines. It was
also necessary to arrange efficient methods for degreasing,
chromatising and spray-varnishing the aluminium. These
were developed in consultation with the Danish Agro
Lindinger company, which primarily imported chemicals for
the agricultural industry, and with the British chemical and
paint conglomerate ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries). As
Agro Lindinger’s owner, Asger Juul Linding Lindinger had
also been in the Danish Resistance, he would most likely
have been a trusted acquaintance of Jean Fischer.
In 1958, Bahnsen brought in his mother-in-law, Ingeborg
Jakobsen, who was a chemist, to take charge of Dæmpa’s
chemical research work, a task she would continue to perform until retirement in 1975. A former engineer colleague of
Bahnsen and Jakobsen, Kurt Pedersen, recalled that she
travelled by train daily from Odense to Tommerup and back
and, on the occasions when she was too absorbed in her
investigating to realise that it was time to go to the station to
travel home, the train driver would make a special stop outside the factory, blowing his whistle to alert her. She then
would run, holding her skirt to avoid tripping, and climb
onboard from the track-side.
The aluminium strips from which the panels were cut, perforated and profiled were delivered by truck and hoisted to the
first floor, where they were stored. There, in an adjacent
small workshop, the factory machines were repaired and
serviced, having been lifted from the production floor
through the otherwise disused and empty shaft of an old
goods lift.
If any welding were needed, it was done in the garage next
to Erik Bahnsen’s house along the road. The carrying rails to
which the panels would be attached were in four-metre-long
sections, which also needed degreasing and varnishing, the
latter carried out in the garage of a local haulage company,
which at that time was the only space in Tommerup big
enough to contain them.
The factory had only a small office for the foreman – a Norwegian named Thor Sprone – and for a secretary, Ruth
Jensen. Altogether, there were around 25-to-30 employees,
making for a family-like atmosphere.
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