Carl Kellner

Carl Kellner (1851-1905), sometimes distinguished on Wikipedia as Carl Kellner the mystic from an earlier and unrelated optician of the same name, was an Austrian chemist, inventor and industrialist born in Vienna. He made significant improvements to the sulfite process used in paper manufacturing and was co-inventor of the Castner-Kellner process for producing chlorine and caustic soda. In 1895 he began discussing plans with his associate Theodor Reuss for an organization he called the Academia Masonica, which the two men decided to name Ordo Templi Orientis. Kellner died in Vienna in 1905, shortly after the first announcements of the new order, so it is debated how much of the O.T.O. as it later developed he lived to see. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/