Aleksandr Loran

Aleksandr Loran
Born	Aleksandr Grigoryevich Loran 1849 Kishinyov, Russian Empire (now in Moldavia)
Died	after 1911
Nationality	Russian
Other names	Александр Григорьевич Лоран Alexander Laurant Aleksandr Lovan Aleksandr Lavrentyev
Alma mater	Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute
Occupation	Teacher
Notable work	Fire fighting foam Foam extinguisher

Aleksandr Grigoryevich Loran (Russian: Александр Григорьевич Лоран) (1849 – after 1911), sometimes called Alexander Laurant or Aleksandr Lovan or Aleksandr Lavrentyev, was a Russian teacher and inventor of fire fighting foam and foam extinguisher.

A modern foam fire extinguisher.

He was born in 1849 in Kishinyov in the Russian Empire, now in Moldavia. After graduating from the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute, he continued his education in Paris, where he studied chemistry.

Returning to Russia, Loran became a teacher in a school in Baku, which was the main center of the Russian oil industry at that time. Impressed by the terrible and hardly extinguishable oil fires that he had seen there, Loran tried to find such a liquid substance that could deal effectively with the problem. So he invented fire fighting foam, which was successfully tested in several experiments in 1902-1903.^[1] In 1904 Loran patented his invention, and developed the first foam extinguisher the same year.^[2]

Subsequently he founded a company called Eurica, based in Saint Petersburg, and started to sell his fire extinguishers under that brand.

Modern usage of fire fighting foam.

See also

• List of Russian inventors

References

1. Loran and the fire extinguisher at p-lab.org (Russian)
2. The history of fire extinguisher (Russian)