Interested in Hellschreiber History? While exploring eBay I found the following item being offered for sale. I am NOT connected with this sale in any way. 73, Pete, KZ1Z FH# 8:
----------------------- 1927 Picture Transmission Fax Invention, Rudolf Hell Item number: 150230791145 --------------- Bildfunk (Picture Transmission) Anleitung zum Selbstbau eines Bildempfaengers (Guide for Building Picture Receivers) by Rudolf Hell Die Radio-Reihe/Band 21 Schmidt, Berlin, 1927. In German. Black hard covers with white lettering, octavo, 114 pages, 80 b&w photographs, schematic diagrams and illustrations Very scarce book by the prominent German engineer and inventor of the first facsimile transmission apparatus as well as many other inventions in radio technology and other fields. This book describes his invention of the Hellschreiber. Rudolf Hell developed technology that led to the fax and the color scanner. Hell's landmark invention was a machine for transmitting text that electronically broke up letters into a stream of dots reassembled at the receiving end, in effect the first telefax. The commercial success of his 1929 "Hell Recorder" allowed him to found his own company. The technology was less prone to poor reception than telex transmissions, making Hell's machines popular for news agencies, the post office and police departments. In the 1920s, he also invented an image scanning tube for televisions and a radio-beam flight-path finder that is considered a forerunner of aircraft autopilots.During World War II in Nazi Germany, Hell worked on encoding machines. After the wartime destruction, he resumed business in 1947 and came up with inventions that revolutionized the graphic arts. An electronically controlled engraver unveiled in 1954 made photo publishing easier for newspapers, and an early version of the color scanner followed in 1963. Hell also was a pioneer of electronic digital typesetting in the 1960s, which ushered out the traditional method using lead. Hell sold his Kiel-based company in 1981 to German industrial giant Siemens. It was later merged with Linotype AG to become Linotype-Hell AG, which in turn was taken over by German printing press maker Heidelberger Druckmaschinen in 1996. Rudolf Hell (December 19, 1901 March 11, 2002) was a German inventor. He was born in Eggm??hl, Bavaria, Germany.From 1919 to 1923 he studied electrical engineering in Munich. He worked there from 1923 to 1929 as assistant of Prof. Max Dieckmann, with whom he operated a television station at the Verkehrsausstellung (lit.: Traffic exhibition) in Munich in 1925. In the same year Hell invented an apparatus called the Hellschreiber, an early forerunner to the fax. Hell received a patent for the Hellschreiber in 1929. In the year 1929 he founded his own company in Babelsberg, Berlin. After World War II he re-founded his company in Kiel. He kept on working as an engineer and invented machines for electronically controlled engraving of printing plates and an electronic photo typesetting system called digiset. He has received numerous awards such as the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Gutenberg Prize awarded by the City of Mainz and the Werner von Siemens Ring. His company was taken over by Siemens AG in 1981 and merged with Linotype in 1990, becoming Linotype-Hell AG.He died in Kiel, Germany. (Wikipedia)Condition: Good+ (Covers have minor shelfwear. Title page has name and date in pencil, triangular piece cut from the lower corner. Foreword page has creases and repair at gutter margin (with no loss of text). Text and illustrations are otherwise intact and clean. Binding is tight.)
