1093 PUBLICATION Concomitant radiochemotherapy with mitomycin c and cisplatin in inoperable carcinoma of the head and neck: preliminary results of phase II study

Abstract

The Swiss inventor Max Ulrich Schoop is believed to be the “father” of thermal spray technology, as he submitted the first two patents in Germany and Switzerland for a metal spraying process delivering “dense metallic coatings” in the year 1909. This invention was based on the well known observation of his children shooting with Flobert guns in the garden, where the lead bullets formed splats when hitting the wall. But who was this Mr. Schoop?Max Ulrich Schoop completed his basic school in Zurich and apprenticeship in graphic processes at the Kronenberg Institute in Allgäu (Germany). After that he returned to Switzerland as a photographer's assistant and later on as a portrait retoucher.As his oldest brother Paul worked as a director of a factory for batteries, Schoop was sent to the Moscow branch, where he left due to health reasons and went to Nizhny–Novgorod as a French and piano teacher. When he returned to Zurich in 1895 he started to study Physics and Electrotechnology at the Technical University of Zurich. After that he went to Vienna and Cologne, back in the accumulator business. In the year 1903 he went to Paris, where he invented the welding of aluminium. In order to market his invention he travelled to the United States of America where he also met Thomas Alva Edison in the year 1907. Schoop then returned to Zurich and opened his own laboratory in the year 1910 to further develop the thermal spray technology for the next 35 years. He finally died in Zurich on February 29, 1956 at the age of 85.May this summary elucidate this brilliant person at the centenary of the first thermal spray patent application.