Hellige (company)

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Exterior view of General Electric, formerly Hellige
Exterior view of General Electric, formerly Hellige

Hellige was one of the world's leading manufacturers of electromechanical electrocardiographs and other electronic medical devices based in Freiburg im Breisgau . After more than 70 years of independence, the traditional company was successively taken over by three different international corporations and is today - in a greatly reduced form - part of General Electric in the GE Healthcare division .

history

The company was founded in 1895 by Fritz Hellige, whose name it bore. Initially, the company acted as a reseller of scientific instruments (especially optical devices from Zeiss ). However, the company also had a workshop in which equipment for research was developed and manufactured.

In the 1930s, Hellige began industrial production of electrocardiographs and other electronic medical devices. In 1938 a mobile 3-channel electrocardiograph was developed for clinical use. Ten years later, in 1948, a portable, photographically recording 1-channel amplifier electrocardiograph followed. In 1966, a battery-operated, transistorized one-hand electrocardiograph was developed.

Name plate from the Litton period (stylized "li")

In 1962, the US conglomerate Litton Industries took over Hellige as part of its European expansion offensive. The expertise of the Freiburg company in the apparatus came Litton zupass than a 800 million marks big order of the Bonn Defense for computerized inertial navigation system based on rate gyros was to be processed. The newly acquired company was supported by Litton Technische Werke Freiburg , which was set up as an electronics factory in 1961.

In the late 1970s took place after the acquisition by PPG Industries renaming Fritz Hellige & Co. GmbH (nickname: Factory scientific apparatus) in the PPG Hellige GmbH . At that time the company had more than 1000 employees.

Marquette Medical Systems took over PPG Hellige in 1996, with the German part of the company operating under the name of Marquette Hellige GmbH . Marquette Hellige has also been the main office of Marquette Medical Systems in Europe since 1997. Both research and production capacities were maintained in Freiburg.

In 1998, Marquette Medical Systems was acquired by General Electric and renamed GE Marquette Medical Systems. In this way, the product portfolio could be expanded to include EKG devices. The initially independent part of the company was finally fully integrated into GE Medical Systems . The location in Freiburg was still held.

Since the takeover by GE Medical Systems, jobs and operating units have been continuously cut in Freiburg. GE transferred the production to the company Microcomputer Systems Components (MSC), now part of the Avnet group as MSC Technologies Systems GmbH.

In 2001 the traditional name “Hellige” was finally given up. Since the beginning of 2008, only around 380 employees have taken care of sales, marketing, service and purchasing and sales.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Etz: Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift , Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker , p. 327, 1970
  2. ↑ a b Self-presentation ( memento of October 18, 1999 in the Internet Archive ) of the company in 1999
  3. ↑ a b c Historical outline ( memento from June 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) from the Clinic for Cardiology at the Ruhr University Bochum
  4. ^ Portrait of the Litton company in Der Spiegel 1/1969
  5. ^ Fritz Hellige: Electrocardiography , Hellige, Freiburg i. Br., 1972
  6. ↑ a b Article in the Badische Zeitung from November 16, 2007
  7. ^ Message in the Weekly Corporate Growth Report of September 28, 1998
  8. ^ Press release from GE Medical Systems dated November 20, 1998

Web links

Coordinates: 47 ° 59 ′ 20.6 ″  N , 7 ° 47 ′ 42.3 ″  E