Edward E. Kleinschmidt

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Edward E. Kleinschmidt (also Ernest Edward Kleinschmidt ) or by birth name Ernst Eduard Kleinschmidt (born September 9, 1876 in Bremen , † August 22, 1977 in Canaan , Connecticut , United States ) was a German-American inventor and entrepreneur.

His developments are considered to be groundbreaking on the way from telegraphy to modern communications technology . In the course of his 101-year life he acquired a total of 118 patents. His first company was one of the two parent companies of Teletype Corporation , for decades one of the world's leading manufacturers of teleprinters . After they were sold, he founded another company, which today offers e-business and internet services under the name Kleinschmidt Inc.

Life

Ernst Eduard Kleinschmidt was born in Bremen. His parents moved to the USA with their eight-year-old son to start a new life there. Edward E. Kleinschmidt, as he called himself after his naturalization in the United States, began to experiment with telegraph devices when he was still a teenager . Even in their new home, his parents did not have the means to enable their son to study. He only acquired his technical knowledge through an evening course in addition to his work for various companies in communications engineering.

In 1898 he opened his own workshop in Brooklyn , New York City, and it is said that he applied for his first patent on a Morse transmitter as early as 1895 . His first major commercial success was not in telegraphy, but in another area that he had come across by chance. The engineer George M. Seely had approached him with the request to help him with his half-finished invention of a locking system for electric rail vehicles. The two then developed together for the railroad. In March 1908 they received a patent on the locking system. At the American Association of Railroads Communications Convention in 1910, they publicly presented a working kit. Patents for various railway signal systems followed .

Around 1910 he developed paper tape punches for Morse telegraphs, as a further development of the "Wheatstone punches" first constructed by Charles Wheatstone and founded the Kleinschmidt Electric Company in the same year . By 1916 Kleinschmidt had constructed a telegraph with keypad for the Baudot-Murray code and applied for a patent for it, which was granted to him in 1924. He had already been using such devices at the Western Union from 1920 . He relied on a "start-stop procedure", as used in 1901 by New Zealander Donald Murray in his further development of the Baudot code. In the United States, however, Howard Krum had recently received a patent for the Morkrum Company . In 1924, a patent dispute developed over this between the companies.

Sterling Morton of Morkrum Company met with Charles B. Goodspeed, representing Kleinschmidt Electric, and it was agreed to end the dispute over the process by merging the companies into the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company . From 1924, Krum and Kleinschmidt combined the respective advantages of their devices and the "Teletype 14", the first model of the new company, was a great success. About 60,000 pieces were produced in total. Also in 1924, the German company C. Lorenz turned to the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company and acquired a license to use the teleprinter patents and the rights to replicate the Model 14 in Germany . In 1925 the company name was simplified to Teletype Corporation .

In 1930, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) took over the company for $ 30 million in shares and subordinated it to its equipment manufacturing subsidiary, the Western Electric Company . In the same year the "Teletype 15" chart recorder was presented, of which a total of over 200,000 were produced in various variants by 1963 and operated until the 1970s . C. Lorenz AG in Berlin immediately acquired the right to reproduce this model , which was soon also known as "Lo15" and was also very successful. In 1940 the Teletype Corporation had actually planned to replace the production of the Model 15 with "Teletype 20", but after the outbreak of the Second World War and the corresponding great needs of the army, it seemed more economical to keep the older and proven device and bring it into mass production . By expanding the "Lo15" at C. Lorenz in the Third Reich to the Lorenz key machine via an addition to the encryption , teleprinters with the "Morkrum-Kleinschmidt system" were ultimately in use in large numbers on both sides of the world war.

Kleinschmidt left the company after the sale and shortly afterwards founded Kleinschmidt Laboratories in order to be able to experiment independently of the AT&T Group, but to be able to continuously develop its teleprinters as a contractor for Teletype Corporation . When his son Bernhard Kleinschmitt described the urgent need for light and portable teletypes in the United States Army Signal Corps during the Second World War , Edward E. Kleinschmidt began to work intensively on the downsizing and in 1944 presented a prototype to the Chief Signal Officer's office . By 1949, his 100-words-per-minute keyboard sheet writer became the standard device of the military. For the following large order of 2000 pieces, however, he first had to set up a new production facility. He eventually found suitable property in Deerfield , Illinois . The company Kleinschmidt Inc. emerged from the Laboratories in 1986 and today (as of 2015) describes itself as the largest privately owned company in the field of network-based eBusiness solutions and services.

By the time he died at the age of 101 in Canaan, Connecticut, from heart disease, his inventions and businesses had long since become a millionaire.

Inventions

In the course of his life, Kleinschmidt received over 118  patents , mainly on signaling devices for the railroad and on his teleprinters . Patents for successor technologies in the field of news and high-speed stock market tickers followed. Very early on, he also dealt with devices for picture telegraphy and with telephone systems. As an inventor, however, he showed himself to be quite versatile, including patents for crimping pliers and a fishing reel .

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Anton A. Huurdeman: The Worldwide History of Telecommunications . John Wiley & Sons, 2003. ISBN 0-471-20505-2 . P. 302 (English)
    ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  2. ^ Gerhard Weinreich: Wegbereiter der Telekommunikentechnik , In: Deutsche Telekom class sheets , Volume 53, No. 1, January 2000, p. 36.
  3. ↑ System for automatically stopping cars or trains , Patent No. 882,695 of March 24, 1908. In: freepatentsonline.com, accessed October 22, 2015
  4. ↑ a b c Kleinschmitt Inc .: Our History . In: Company website, accessed October 21, 2015
  5. ↑ Signaling System , Patent No. 869,576 of October 29, 1907. Signaling System , Patent No. 881,005 of March 3, 1908. Signaling System , Patent No. 884,738 of April 14, 1908. In: freepatentsonline.com, accessed October 22, 2015
  6. ↑ Keyboard Tape Perforator , Patent No. 1,085,984 and Keyboard Tape Perforator , Patent No. 1,085,985 of February 3, 1914. In: freepatentsonline.com, accessed October 22, 2015
  7. ↑ Michael Pröse: Encryption machines and deciphering devices in World War II: the history of technology and aspects of the history of computer science , Volume 2 of the Forum of the History of Science . Martin Meidenbauer Verlag, 2006. ISBN 978-3-89975-548-0 . P. 96 f.
    ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  8. ↑ Pliers , Patent No. 731,688 of April 14, 1902. In: freepatentsonline.com, accessed October 22, 2015
  9. ↑ Fishing-reel , Patent No. 871,345 dated November 19, 1907. In: freepatentsonline.com, accessed October 22, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Kleinschmidt, Edward E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kleinschmidt, Edward Ernst (full name); Ernst Eduard Kleinschmidt (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American inventor and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH 22nd August 1977
Place of death Canaan , Connecticut