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---> Who is engineer Nicolas
Dymcoff?
 Nicolas
Dymcoff was born on the 6th of December 1859 in one big
Bulgarian village in Sersko – Gorno Brodi, which at that
time was still part of the Ottoman empire (today the
village is called Ano Vrondy, Greece). Nicolas Dymcoff
was the third child in the family of the eminent Dimko
Halembakov, who was part of a prestigious Bulgarian
national revival’s clan. Nicolas studied in his native
village and in the high-school in Plovdiv which he
graduated with excellent marks. In 1880, he was sent by
the director of the Plovdiv high-school to study
Engineering in the Supreme Technical Institute in Chalon
Sur Mer, close to Paris. Even during the time he was
still a student, he received several patents for
inventions. In 1883 he graduated the institute for three
years instead of the standard five years. His professors
offered him to stay for a science research in a
university in Paris, but he refused to them and returned
to Bulgaria, which was just liberated.
He settled in liberated Bulgaria and started work at the
Bulgarian Ministry of Infrastructure and Electro
Communications as a Head of the Railway Directorate.
Later he participated in the Parliamentary Commission
for Negotiating the Delivery of Ships for the Bulgarian
navy. He was also part of a project for the connection
of railway line Vienna – Tzarigrad between Vakarel and
Belovo and during this project, Nicolas invented a
special protection for the train workers. However, due
to economic reasons at that time his model for
protection of train workers was rejected, but in the
next years, the invention was bought by many national
and private firms and companies in Germany, UK, France,
and Italy. Nicolas settled in Tzarigrad and he gained
popularity with another project for automatic
interconnection of shipping composition. This design was
personally rejected by Sultan Abdul Hamid and Dymcoff
had to be arrested. Thus, Dymcoff was supposed to hide
for a long time among the Bulgarian community in the
town, but after his design was bought by enterprising
Europeans from the UK, Italy, and France, Dymcoff‘s name
was finally cleaned.
For many years, Dymcoff was active as a discoverer: he
has many world patents for technological inventions –
sticks for carriages, mechanisms for loading – unloading
cargos and many others. Being extremely enterprising, he
ended up in Tzarigrad where he founded a factory for
horseshoes and wedges – an industry, which although
might not seem so important to a contemporary man, was
very often mentioned and highly praised by the European
press at that time. With the financial help of his
fellow student from Paris, Mr. Stoyan Danev, Dymcoff
founded a factory for manufacturing of horseshoes where
he managed to adopt his invention for automatic convey
into the process of manufacturing. At that time, the
Prime Minister Todor Burmov got deeply interested of
Dymcoff’s invention for automatic convey. The Prime
Minister of Bulgaria secured a state loan of 20 000
Golden Lev for Nicolas Dymcoff and he became an
equivalent partner in the factory for horseshoes
“Engineer Nicolas Dymcoff & Co.” in Tzarigrad. Moreover,
at this time this factory was the first one where
Dymcoff brought in diesel engines and later, electric
engines.
Nicolas Dymcoff was a very capable machine engineer,
well-knowledgeable person, mastering many Western and
Eastern languages. He was respected and sought-after. He
was a highly acknowledged Bulgarian, patron of the
unprivileged, defender of the humiliated ones, humanist
and philanthropist, who never sought only for private
wealth. His main responsibility was taking care of the
workers in his fabrics. All machineries were safeguarded
and secured and the illiterate workers were not afraid
to work with them. Also, Dymcoff paid for the creation
of a dining room for his workers and was giving them
working clothes for free.
The Bulgarians in Tzarigrad chose Dymcoff for an advisor
of Exarch Joseph I and as a part of the Bulgarian
Exarchate in Tzarigrad, Dymcoff actively participated in
the life of the Bulgarian community there. He was
proclaimed for an honorary citizen of the Ottoman
Empire. He got married in Tzarigrad to a woman from
Skopje, whose name was Ekaterina Trajkova.
He was deeply interested in history and he managed to
redeem from Turkey many Bulgarian archive materials,
including the documents from the trial of Vasil Levski
(the most famous Bulgarian revolutionary for the
liberation of Bulgaria).
His life ended up in an absurd way – on the 30th of
March 1937, Nicolas Dymcoff was hit by a car in
Tzarigrad. The whole Bulgarian community in Tzarigrad
attended his funeral. (On the picture – Eng. Nicolas
Dymcoff at the age of 70)
Nicolas Dymcoff is an uncle of the famous Bulgarian
medic Petar Dymcoff.
The official celebration of engineer Nicolas Dymcoff in
Bulgaria was performed for the first time on 24.10.1989
in Blagoevgrad for the 130th anniversary of his birth.
In 2009 we celebrated 150 years of the birth of this
prominent and famous Bulgarian.
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