Patents

Ljubomir Klerić

(1844-1910)

Ljubomir Klerić was born in Banatska Subotica in the family of German immigrants.  When he moved with his family to Belgrade, where he graduated at the First Man Belgrade High School and the Technical Faculty of the Higher School, he changed his surname from Klery to Klerić and his name Julius to Ljubomir.  As the state scholarship holder he got education in the Mining Academy in Freiburg, which he completed as the first Serbian graduated mining engineer. He was the regular professor and then the Dean of the Technical Faculty. He published 48 books and works from mechanics and mathematics. In 1872, he was elected for the regular member of the Serbian Learned Society and after the establishment of the Serbian Royal Academy, he became the secretary of its Board for Natural Sciences. It is interesting that it was Kleric himself who proposed Nikola Tesla for the corresponding Academy member (1894). He was nominated by the Ministry of Education and Religious Issues in 1895, and for the Ministry of Peoples Economy in 1897. He was also the member of the Government Board. In the Serbian-Turkish war he participated like a miner and he was awarded the Medal for Bravery and the Cross of Takovo.

Klerić was also a fruitful inventor, who developed several devices in the field of mining, such as the “Drill with the Rope”, intended for deep and difficult drilling in the field. He also constructed a polar pantograph, tractiriograph, device intended for drawing curving lines of the second order as well as tellemeter for measuring distance in the battlefield. Considering the fact that in those days in Serbia still there existed no patent system, Klerić protected his inventions abroad (in France, Belgium, Germany), but the precise number of his patents is still not known.