More on Paul Jaray

Paul Jaray (1889-1974)
Hungarian, born in Vienna, he pioneered aerodynamism in the first part of the twentieth century.
He designed the new generation of Zeppelins with a tear drop shape instead of the long narrow cylinder of the first dirigibles.
With Zeppelin he experimented on automobiles bodies in a wind tunnel and, later on, designed special bodies for Benz, Adler, Hanomag, Maybach, Audi.... The Tatras 77 and 87 were his only automobiles with a success story and apparently he was not involved with the Volkswagen or Mercedes 170 H which followed his patents.
Anyhow, Chrysler for the Airflow and Peugeot for the 402 were obliged to pay royalties to Paul Jaray.
In the late twenties he left for Switzerland and created his own consulting Company STROMLINEN KAROSSERIE GES. in Zurich

Jaray, Paul, b. Vienna, March 11, 1889, d. St. Gallen (Switzerland), Sept. 22, 1974, enginieer. Moved to Germany soon after his studies in Vienna and Prague, where he worked as an aircraft designer in 1913/14 and planned the Zeppelin airships LZ 38 to LZ 126 1914-1923. In 1919 planned a wind tunnel for a zeppelin, for decades studied specific questions of this field of work, especially streamlined automobiles.
Lived in Switzerland from 1923 until his death. Also played a major role in the development of the bicycle in 1920s.

(Encyclopedia of Austria - www.aeiou.at/aeiou.encyclop)

Paul Jaray, with his "J-Rad",

wanted to utilize the theories of aerodynamics in the field of bicycle-constructions. His aim was to minimize the air resistance.

In 1922/23 the Hesperus-Werke at Stuttgart produced about 2000 of those bicycles in three different versions, designed by Paul Jaray. Mostly in the Netherlands they were successful.

1923 the production was stopped, when deadly accidents occurred as a result of material faults.

In his curriculum vitae Paul made a notice on this, which makes clear that it was not a question of bad construction, but unreasonable economies by buying raw material of poor quality.

J-Rad 1922, Hansi and Peter Jaray

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