Edgar Gretener

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Eidophor projector
Vocoder Gretacoder 101, circa 1973

Edgar Gretener (born March 2, 1902 in Lucerne ; † October 21, 1958 in Zurich ) was a Swiss electrical engineer .

Life

Gretener was the twelfth of 14 siblings. He studied electrical engineering at the ETH Zurich , received his diploma as electrical engineer in 1925, became an assistant to Karl Kuhlmann and received his doctorate in 1929. sc. tech. ETH. He then became head of development at the Albiswerk in Zurich, and in 1930 he came to Berlin as head of the laboratories in the telegraph department at Siemens & Halske's headquarters . There he met the Swiss electrical engineer Fritz Fischer , who, after being appointed professor at ETH Zurich in 1932, made Gretener his senior assistant. Fischer is the inventor of the Eidophor video projection system, for which a patent was applied for on November 8, 1939. At that time, Gretener was the project manager for the development of an Eidophor prototype at the Department of Industrial Research (AfiF) at ETH, with Fischer on the board.

After the beginning of the Second World War, Gretener responded to the call of the war technology department of the Swiss Confederation to develop an encryption add- on for teleprinters. For this purpose, with the financial help of his former classmate Robert Käppeli, the company Dr. Edgar Gretener AG founded in Zurich-Altstetten. The first product developed in this context was the then novel strip telegraph ETK, later with the encryption add-on Telecrypto 53. Various other encryption devices for different types of use followed.

At the end of 1947, Fischer died prematurely. This made the Eidophor project at ETH orphaned. Gretener took over the project together with the project manager Hugo Thiemann . Eidophor was subsequently accepted by the Dr. Edgar Gretener AG made ready for production and successfully marketed internationally.

After Gretener's death in October 1958, the Swiss chemical company CIBA Holding AG (where Käppeli was now head of the company) took over Dr. Edgar Gretener AG and continued the business under the company name Gretag AG . The Gretag cryptography division was continued by the Swiss company Omnisec AG, which was liquidated in 2018.

literature

  • Heinrich Johannes: The History of the Eidophor Large Screen Television Projector . Gretag, Regensdorf 1989 (edited on behalf of Gretag AG).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ E. Gretener: Dissertation (PDF)
  2. ↑ Company history
  3. ↑ Single-tone combination writer 1947/1950, with 93 baud
  4. ↑ W. Gerber: Nekrolog. In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung , vol. 76 (1958), issue 51, p. 782, ISSN  0036-7524 .
personal data
SURNAME Gretener, Edgar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss electrical engineer
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucerne
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1958
Place of death Zurich