Hans Sauer (inventor)

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Hans Sauer (born June 4, 1923 in Mladetzko ( Troppau district , Moravia ), † May 13, 1996 in Deisenhofen ) was a German inventor .

biography

Hans Sauer was born as the son of a farmer in the German-speaking Sudetenland and after finishing school he initially trained as a farmer. In 1940 he volunteered for the Air Force . At the end of the war, Hans Sauer became an American prisoner of war and worked there as a technical draftsman .

Hans Sauer was married to Eva Sauer (1938–2008) and had several children.

In 1950 he began studying at the Oskar von Miller Polytechnic in Munich and graduated at the age of 27 in the precision mechanics / optics department there. Hans Sauer went to Siemens , where he worked as a development engineer for electromechanical switching elements ( relays ). In 1954 he emigrated to the USA, where he continued to work on relay development for the Autelco and Comar companies until 1956 .

He soon returned to Germany and became an engineer at Schaltbau GmbH in Munich. In 1962, after twelve years of development work in large companies and disappointed that many of his relay developments, the importance of which were "either not recognized" by the superiors or which "shied away from innovation obstacles", Hans Sauer set up his own business and founded the SDS (safety Through-System) -Elektro GmbH.

Since around 1952, Hans Sauer had recognized that the actually "old" relay technology could fundamentally be replaced. Since then he has been working on new relay concepts, which have led to modern high-performance relay technology through Sauer 's 309 patents worldwide .

An SDS relay

When looking for licensees and investors for his innovations, Hans Sauer encountered disinterest and rejection from large companies for electronic components such as Siemens and ITT . In 1963, however, he found in the Japanese Matsushita Electric Works Ltd. a cooperation partner. This soon led to the reorganization into SDS Relais AG with modern production and sales facilities in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, England and Sweden and finally also in the USA. In Europe alone, SDS-Relais AG achieved sales of almost 80 million euros in 1985.

Hans Sauer's miniature relays became the central components in all electrical devices and systems, the microchips of the 1970s and 1980s. Compared to the relay technology of that time, they meant 100 times more reliability, 1,000 times the efficiency, had a 10,000 times expanded switching capacity range, reduced energy consumption to a thousandth and could be programmed for a wide variety of applications while at the same time significantly lowering manufacturing costs.

Hans Sauer's relay developments built the decisive technical bridge from the electromechanical to the electronic components that function on the basis of integrated semiconductor circuits. In 1989 Hans Sauer sold his company entirely to the Matsushita Group (today's Panasonic Electric Works Europe AG in Holzkirchen) and founded the "Hans Sauer Foundation for Evolution-Oriented Recognition and Action". Ursula Sauer is represented by a daughter and who awards the Hans Sauer Prize every two years. Together with the inventor entrepreneurs Ludwig Bölkow and Artur Fischer , Hans Sauer devoted himself intensively to the search for answers to the question of the deeper reasons for inventiveness and the coexistence of man and nature.

Hans Sauer Foundation

Foundation logo

In 1989, Hans Sauer founded a foundation named after him , according to his own statements with the vision "that innovations in the future will generally arise from a social and ethical motivation and thus generate measurable social and ecological benefits". The purpose of the foundation is to promote science and research.

philosophy

Hans Sauer had already dealt early on with cosmobiology and evolutionary theoretical ideas , which now resulted in his own philosophical considerations with two central assumptions. On the one hand, the knowledge that humans live in a world of networked systems, the understanding of which with the help of " cybernetic creativity " is the prerequisite for rational decisions as well as invention, research and innovation activities. On the other hand, the premise that “the decisive criterion for thinking is truthfulness. The ethics that underlie a thought at the moment it arises shape the quality and effect of what is thought ”.

Works

Monographs

  • Relay Lexicon . Hüthig, Heidelberg 1985.
  • Modern relay technology . Modern industry, Landsberg / Lech 1988.

Contributions

  • Cooperation with evolution. In: Monika Sachtleben (ed.): Cooperation with evolution. Diederichs, Munich 1999, pp. 15–37.
  • Cybernetic Creativity. The cooperation with evolution. In: Wilhelm Ebert (Ed.): Evolution, Creativity and Education . Alois Erdl Verlag, Trostberg 1995, pp. 51-68.
  • With E. Zerbst: Cybernetics and Bionics. Invention methods with a future. In: German Action Group Education-Invention-Innovation (Hrsg.): DABEI manual for inventors and entrepreneurs. VDI, Düsseldorf 1987, pp. 55-75.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Foundation. In: www.hanssauerstiftung.de. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Sour, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German inventor
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Mladetzko
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1996
PLACE OF DEATH Deisenhofen