Richard von Foregger

Richard von Foregger jr. was an Austrian swimmer who was eliminated in the heats of the 200 metres freestyle at the 1900 Paris Olympic Games. He studied chemistry at the universities of München, Stuttgart, and Bern. After his studies in Bern, he went to Russia, working for a British company on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. He was fluent in Russian, French, and English. His father Richard von Foregger sr. (1842-1916), trained as a lawyer, who was a judge and later a senator in the Austrian Parliament.

In 1898, von Fornegger jr. came to America and served under the electrical engineer Karl Steinmetz (1865–1923) at the General Electric Co., in Schenectady, New York. In 1900, he was sent as a representative of the company to the International Universal Exposition in Paris. After the exposition closed, he lived and worked in Berlin.

In 1902 von Fornegger emigrated to the Unites States and was naturalized in 1910. He founded a company to produce anesthetic equipment in 1914, which in 1950 had obtained a 15% market share in the USA. He was involved in introducing the metric system to medical devices. In addition anaesthetic gas machines, carbon dioxide absorbers, equipment for oxygen therapy, and resuscitation, von Foregger manufactured an entire series of accessories, pharyngeal airways in various sizes, endotracheal tubes, forceps, connectors, adapters, slip joints, pediatric nonrebreathing valves, and laryngoscope blades in several sizes and in numerous varieties.

In 1958, von Foregger was diagnosed with paranoid psychosis and was not able to deal with and control his private life anymore. He died at the age of 87 in 1960. At autopsy revealed cerebral arteriosclerosis, extensive cystic degeneration of the brain and congestive heart failure.