Plath GmbH
| PLATH GmbH | |
|---|---|
| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | March 26, 1954 |
| Seat | Hamburg , Germany |
| management | Nico Scharfe (CEO) Hinrich Brüggmann (CEO) |
| Number of employees | 180 |
| sales | 45 million EUR (FY 2016) |
| Branch | Telecommunication reconnaissance systems, radio surveillance and radio location for maritime traffic safety, mass data analysis and visualization |
| Website | plath.de |
The PLATH GmbH is an internationally active medium-sized German company based in Hamburg that specializes in the field of military radio monitoring and radiolocation specializes.
overview
This area is one of the communications intelligence for tactical (COMMS ESM) and strategic applications ( COMINT ) on the one hand, as well as applications for the maritime traffic control and to support search and rescue ( Search and Rescue ) on the other. In association with various subsidiaries, PLATH GmbH covers the entire process chain of communication intelligence with its products and systems, from sensors to the analysis and evaluation of mass data. PLATH GmbH employs around 180 people and achieved sales of 45 million euros in the 2016 financial year. In 2009, PLATH GmbH was ranked 49th among the hundred future world market leaders by Handelsblatt and rated as a "Hidden Champion" by VDI Nachrichten.
history
In 1837 David Filby , an instrument maker from Husum, founded a trading house for nautical instruments and maps in Hamburg, which was taken over by Carl Christian Plath from Hamburg in 1862. Further name changes and holdings followed, such as in Cassens & Bennecke, which from 1909 marketed navigation devices under the name Cassens & Plath in Bremerhaven, or Weems and Plath in Annapolis, USA, until C. Plath KG was founded in 1937. In 1950, C. Plath KG set up a department for the development of radio navigation devices in their so-called compass house, which had been part of the picture of the Hamburg harbor for decades . The management of this department was taken over by Maximilian Wächtler, who is considered a pioneer in the field of radio location and radio or telecommunications intelligence (he received the Rudolf Diesel Medal ) and held more than 60 patents in this field.
From this department, with the inclusion of parts of the Signalgesellschaft founded in Kiel in 1911, C. Plath GmbH or today's PLATH GmbH was founded. Today, PLATH and its subsidiaries innoSysTec, PROCITEC, PLATH EFT and PLATH AG are united under the umbrella of the PLATH Group. The majority owner today is the family company Handelsgesellschaft Scharfe mbH & Co. KG.
C. Plath KG, on the other hand, was transferred to LITEF GmbH, which is now called Northrop Grumman LITEF GmbH. Due to this history of origin and the many identical names, PLATH GmbH is often mistakenly viewed as the successor to C. Plath KG and associated with compasses and other navigation devices. Among the managing directors of C. Plath GmbH was also Mr. Pfaff, who managed the company from 1989 to 1997. Pfaff, together with Colonel a. D. Grabau wrote some of the basic literary works of radio intelligence. These are still used today in the training of the EloKa troops of the German Federal Armed Forces and are part of the standard work of a scout.
Product divisions
PLATH GmbH became known primarily through the manufacture of visual radio direction finders for navigation and the location of ships in emergencies. In times when there was no GPS, these devices were of the utmost importance for determining position in maritime shipping. In the 1950s and 1960s, PLATH GmbH, together with Telefunken / DEBEG, which in turn used components from PLATH, dominated the direction finding technology. This dominance in the market even went so far that radio direction finding on the SFP7000 dual-channel direction finder was explained in the standard manual for nautical officers.
- Communication intelligence systems
- DF and location systems
- Evaluation systems
Products
- Antennas
- Radio receiver
- Radio direction finder
- Bearing data compressor
- Signal analysis software
- Evaluation software for mass data
- Control software
Technical milestones
Other technical innovations that PLATH GmbH could come up with include: B. noteworthy: the maximum principle of the visual radio direction finder as well as patents for the first dual-channel visual radio direction finder, methods for direction finding and location of transmitters in frequency hopping radio links or, more recently, methods for deceiving satellite navigation ( GPS spoofing ). Since the company was founded in 1954, more than 200 patents have been registered.
- 1953 Development of the world's first series-ready dual-channel direction finder with official approval
- 1958 modular visual radio direction finder with plug-in modules for different frequency ranges and functions
- 1960 Development of the first remote-controlled radio direction finder
- 1971 Delivery of the first automatic DF system
- 1975 Radio direction finder for direction finding of signals below the noise threshold
- 1976 Commissioning of the first automatic radio reconnaissance system
- 1982 Realization of the point cloud location method in real time
- 1988 remotely controllable shortwave DF system for the Bundeswehr
- 1988 world's first broadband radio direction finder
- 1988 automatic direction finding system for VTS systems
- 1989 Prototype of the first broadband direction finder based on the Watson-Watt method
- 1996 GPS spoofing patent
- 1997 Introduction of the bearing data compressor
- 1999 Foundation of PROCITEC and entry into signal analysis
- 2003 fully automated telecommunications reconnaissance system
- 2009 broadband 7-channel interferometer direction finder for V / UHF
- 2012 first sensor-independent ICM system
- 2013 first product line for full RF coverage
- 2014 first sensor-independent automatic data fusion
- 2015 first fully automatic digital bearing data evaluation
Picture gallery
Sextant (around 1890)
Ship compass
Aviator ATK 3 with computing circle (1930s)
Adcock antenna
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ 100 growth champions in medium-sized businesses. ( Memento of August 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) on vdi-nachrichten.com, accessed on April 30, 2010.
- ↑ Photo of the compass house on einestages.spiegel.de
- ↑ Bernd Horstmann (Ed.): Radio bearings yesterday, today, tomorrow. Maximilian Wächtler 80 years, 2nd edition, Hamburg 1981.
- ^ Rudolf Grabau, Klaus Pfaff (ed.): Funkpeiltechnik. Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart 1989.
- ↑ Radio navigation: bearing. on seefunknetz.de
- ↑ a b Joachim Beckh: Lightning and anchor. Volume 2: Information technology, history & background. Norderstedt 2005.
- ^ Müller, Krauss: Handbook for the ship's command. Volume 1, Part C - Navigation. 8th edition, Berlin 1986.
- ^ Database of the German Patent and Trademark Office at depatisnet.dpma.de