60 Years of Innovation

1952 – Béla Barényi, a Hungarian-Austrian engineer, develops the concept of the crumple zone for Daimler-Benz. He recognizes that deformable zones at the front and rear of a vehicle can reduce the impact on the passenger compartment during a collision. The crumple zone was patented in 1952 making Barényi a pioneer in passive safety.

1958 – The rotary piston engine DKM54 becomes the very first Wankel engine. The invention of the self-taught mechanical engineer Felix Wankel is the epitome of the smooth-running engine and guarantees high speed to this day.

1950 – The Stihl company launches the first petrol powered chainsaw operable by a single person. Although its weight of 16 kilos still makes it tough to handle, the Stihl BL saw lays the foundation stone for the Swabian company’s leading world market position today.

1950 – Alfred Kärcher succeeds in developing the first European high-pressure hot water blaster, the pioneering DS 350 steam blaster.

1955 – The pharmaceuticals company Merck introduces the first medication for geriatric diseases, Gerobion. This marks Merck’s early involvement in an area that is now seen as one of the most urgent in medicine.

1958 – The Bayer subsidiary, Drugofa, launches the mosquito and tick repellent AUTAN on the market, at first as a lotion. In time the range is expanded to include sprays and sticks. Today the World Health Organization still recommends the AUTAN agent. Nowadays, the world-famous repellent is marketed by the American company SC Johnson.

1955 – The world’s first computer was developed by the Berlin inventor Konrad Zuse in 1941, the legendary Z3. 14 years later Zuse is able to present the Z11, a model that is ready to go into serial production.

1958 – The principle of the cavity wall plug invented by Artur Fischer is both simple and ingenious: tightening a screw in the plug causes the plug’s small wings to fan out for tight fixing. They cling firmly to the wall, thus preventing the plug from turning with the screw.

1960

1967 – Wilhelm Prölss believed that even the largest freighters can travel up to 20 knots and sail up to 50 degrees against the wind. In 1967 he presented the Dyna Rigg concept at the University of Hamburg – without success. But forty years later the developers of the luxury yacht "Maltese Falcon" put his ecological Dyna Rigg concept into practice.

1967 – Reduced harmful emissions, reduced fuel consumption: the D-Jetronic developed by Bosch lays the foundations for modern petrol engines. It is the world's first electronic fuel injection system to be applied in a serially produced car – a VW.

1965 – The GDR printing press producer Planeta builds the world’s first sheet-fed offset press based on the unit construction principle. The construction of the Variant 4 becomes the model for modern sheet-fed offset printing machines. Meanwhile, Planeta has become part of the Koenig & Bauer Group, one of the biggest printing press producers in the world.

1969 – The entrepreneur Eugen Lägler revolutionizes floor sanding techniques with his inventions. The famous HUMMEL of 1969 (called the bumblebee because of its humming sound) is still the most widely sold floor sander in the world.

1960 – Karl Storz's invention of the cold-light source enables the transmission of astonishingly clear images from inside the human body by conveying light through fibreglass filaments. The ongoing development of cold light source endoscopy also smoothed the way to today’s minimal invasion techniques in surgery.

1963 – The chemist Helmut Zahn from Aachen makes a progressive stride in the treatment of diabetes by pioneering the synthetic production of insulin.

1962 – Walter Bruch develops the PAL technique and paves the way to the introduction of colour television in the Federal Republic of Germany. PAL’s exceptional colour fidelity also helps to assert the technique in a lot of countries worldwide.

1969 – When Jürgen Dethloff and Helmut Göttrup patent their invention as the "identification switch", it marks the beginning of an international career. Now known as the chip card, life in the modern world is hard to imagine without it.

1970

1973 – Scientists at the Technical University in Aachen are ahead of the times. Long before hybrid engines became a trend in the automobile industry, they develop the first combination of a petrol engine and an electric motor.

1979 – In Hamburg, a number of German companies present the world’s first maglev passenger train, a forerunner of the modern Transrapid.

1976 – The Böhler & Weber Machine Factory (now Böwe Systec AG) is a trailblazer. In 1976 the company sets a record in the field of office equipment with the world’s fastest en­veloping system which can fill 12,500 envelopes per hour.

1976 – The Bauer company develops its first rotary drilling rig, the BG 7. Rotary drilling rigs are the key machinery in specialized underground engineering, for instance when creating the foundations for a wind turbine beneath the seabed. Today Bauer Maschinen GmbH is the world-market leader in the production of specialist foundation engineering machinery.

1976 – The Max Planck scientists Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann provide the solution to numerous riddles in cellular communication with the patch clamp technique. To this day it benefits areas of medicine, for instance neurobiology.

1978 – Together with her American colleague Eric Wieschaus, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard begins developing the gradient theory based on investigations of the fruit fly Drosophila. Their insights also play a significant role in human genetics.

1974 – The somewhat cumbersome term “long-distance printing transmitter” conceals a wealth of German top-quality technology introduced by the company Infotec. The new appliance was Europe’s first digital fax machine.

1976 – As early as 1904, Merck in Darmstadt was offering liquid crystal on the market. Finally, in 1976, the breakthrough for liquid crystal displays (LCDs) came thanks to substances with better chemical and optical properties.

1980

1980 – The automobile manufacturer Audi celebrates a world premiere at the 50th Geneva International Motor Show. The Quattro is the first large scale production coupé with permanent all-wheel drive.

1981 – In 1971 Mercedes-Benz successfully completes an airbag test, but the idea is difficult to launch on the market. The breakthrough comes in 1981 when the Mercedes-Benz S-Class includes the airbag as a special accessory. Today this safety device is standard equipment.

1984 – Chipboard enables reasonably priced and ecologically friendly furniture production, because it is made from the by-products from sawmills. The ContiRoll chipboard press produced by Siempelkamp since 1984 is so efficient that it is now the world market leader.

1987 – Siemens decisively improves submarine propulsion with its Permasyn motor. It is significantly quieter, more compact and lighter than its predecessor.

1980 – The company Dornier first introduces its groundbreaking kidney stone lithotripter. For the first time it becomes possible to break up the kidney stones with the help of shock waves, thus avoiding the use of invasive surgery.

1985 – Magnetic resonance tomography provides precise images of spinal discs, the brain, the heart and other organs. The detection method evolved thanks to the FLASH rapid imaging technique invented by Jens Frahm in 1985.

1987 – How can music files be easily compressed without losing their acoustic quality? MP3-style audio data compression makes it all possible. The innovative procedure is first presented by a development team surrounding Karlheinz Brandenburg at the Fraunhofer Institute in Erlangen.

1988 – Independent of one another and almost at the same time, Albert Fert from France and Peter Grünberg from Germany discover the giant magnetoresistance effect and make the breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks.

1990

1994 – Daimler presents the NECAR 1 as the first vehicle with fuel-cell drive. Since then the company from Stuttgart has invested more than a billion euros in the environmentally friendly technology and now owns one of the world’s largest fuel-cell fleets with more than 100 test vehicles.

1995 – Three letters that stand for ideal vehicle safety: Bosch develops its landmark electronic stability programme, ESP. If a car gets out of control, the now widespread system quickly brings it back on track with individual wheel deceleration.

1995 – The model 926 marks the beginning of the Vario series 900 by Fendt, today’s most successful large tractor series in Europe. The outstanding feature of Vario 926 with 260 hp is its continuously variable transmission, then revolutionary in heavy-duty tractor technology. The subsequent model, the Vario 936, becomes the fastest and most powerful tractor.

1996 – The Kuka Robot Group of Augsburg develops the first marketable PC piloting system for industrial robots. It marks a decisive step in the high-precision interplay between software, steering and mechanical processes.

1997 – Otto Bock HealthCare presents the C-Leg, the first fully microprocessor controlled artificial knee joint. The invention is combined with precision design and convincingly enables well-nigh natural movements of the limb.

1999 – Stefan Hell experimentally produces his STED

which awakens new hope in medicine. Later, in 2008 his advanced microscope actually enables him to film a cellular life process with resolution at the nanometre scale.

1993 – Once scientists have recognized how dangerous chlorfluorcarbons (CFCs) are to the ozone layer, the feverish search for solutions begins. An early breakthrough is achieved by the company Foron in Saxony together with Greenpeace who are able to present the first CFC-free refrigerator: the environmentally friendly Greenfreeze.

1998 – Theodor Hänsch, who later won the Nobel Prize, invents the optical frequency comb technique enabling high-precision measuring procedures. Its spectacular applications range from atom analysis to space research.

2000

2005 – A juggernaut of the skies makes its maiden voyage on April 27, 2005. The Airbus A380 is the world’s largest jetliner and a joint European project that benefits strongly from German technological expertise.

2010 –Volkswagen wins the World Green Car Award at the New York International Auto Show for its BlueMotion Technologies umbrella brand created in 2009. The award honours achievements in low-emissions fuel consumption.

2007 – Liebherr’s LTM 11200-9.1 is a juggernaut of the highways. The strongest telescopic crane on the world market can reach a top speed of 75 km/h and operates with a total counterweight of 202 tons. Its telescopic boom can be extended to a record length of 100 metres. In addition, the boom is fully automated for extension to the required length.

2003 – Under the abbreviation SARS, the so-called bird flu leads to deaths and anxiety throughout the world. But a major step towards combating the disease is achieved by scientists at the Bernhard Nocht Institute in Hamburg, when they manage to identify the SARS virus.

2004 – Siemens presents the world’s fastest computer tomography (CT) scanner, the SOMATOM Sensation 64. The detection device sets new standards not only in speed but also in image quality and detail accuracy.

2002 – The ThyssenKrupp TWIN elevator system enables two separate cabins to operate simultaneously within one shaft and independently access the individual floors. This means that 40 per cent more people can reach their destination in a shorter time.

2009 – The European space telescopes Herschel and Planck are launched into orbit on May 14 2009. German technology is included on board the spacecraft and helps to deliver excellent images of the universe.