The most important industrialist Norway ever had. An engineer and industrialist of exceptional talent, he founded in 1905 “Norsk Hydro” and ''Det Norske Aktieselskap for Elektronisk industri'', today Elkem.
Samuel Eyde, born in Arendal, southern Norway on the 29 Oct 1866. He was the son of a ship owner and builder.
Sent to sea at the age of 16, he came back with the desire to study engineering and graduated in Berlin in 1891.
Sam Eyde started his career in Hamburg, working with the railways where he planned new lines, bridges and stations.
SAM EYDE BIOGRAPHY
He was first married to the Swedish Ulla Mörner af Morlanda (1889) who gave him 3 children : Astrid (later Astrid von Arnold), Sigurd Eyde (Christine Viennet’s father) and Liv (later Liv Lehusen- Aarman). Divorced, he then married Elida called Elly Simonsen (de Clairefeuille) in1913, an actress with whom he had 1 son, Haakon Eyde.
In 1897, together with his previous boss, he started his own business “Gleim&Eyde”. He established offices in Kristiania (Oslo) and Stockholm and by the turn of the century his firm was the largest in Scandinavia.
Beside his work as an engineer, Eyde was an open-minded person always looking at possibilities to develop his business. He received Swedish capital to finance the right to use several waterfalls for industrial purposes and he was, with several other engineers, engaged in the fixation of nitrogen from the air. At a dinner party he met the famous professor Kristian Birkeland (1903).
Eyde had recently bought the rights to several waterfalls in Telemark. Birkeland was working on developping an electric arc. They agreed to cooperate. Eyde told Birkeland that he wanted the biggest flash of lightning that could be brought down to earth in order to make artificial fertilizer. "I have it !", replied Birkelands.
While demonstrating his electromagnetic cannon at the university of Oslo, Birkeland provoked an enormous explosion ! The two men immediately started to develop what later became the Birkeland-Eyde process, the first process in the world for the fixation of nitrogen in the air for the manufacturing of artificial fertilizer.
This was the beginning of Norsk Hydro founded in 1905, first at Notodden and later at Rjukan in Telemark where powerful waterfalls could provide the electric power. He gave a new life to Rjukan and the Telemark area, building modern factories and attractive houses for his engineers and workers. Schools in Rjukan reached at that time the highest level of academic performance in Norway.
Eyde established ''Det Norske Aktieselskap for Elektronisk industri'', today Elkem, with the financial help of the Swedish banker family Wallenberg, with France (Parisbas) and German bankers, while remaining director of both companies.
In 1912 Sam Eyde was meant to take the Titanic. Business commitments meant he missed that passage and took the next boat to New York “The Mauretania”. Shocked by the terrible drama of the Titanic, he established with the NY authorities the first « Iceberg detection Foundation''.
In 1916, he bought Semb Hovedgaard” and “Sande gaard”… near Horten (Vestfold), where Christine Eyde Viennet spent her childhood.
In 1920, he was apppointed Ambassador to Poland.
Sam Eyde died in Oslo 21st of June 1940.
