Dr. Rudolf Hell (1901-2002) was one of the most important German inventors of all time. E.g., with Prof. Dieckmann in 1925, he invented the Photoelectric Image Scanning Tube (a TV camera tube); he invented the electronically controlled "Klischograph" half-tone photo-engraver in 1951 and revolutionized printed press technology, the first practical fax machine in 1956, a color scanner in 1963, a computerized CRT type-setter in 1965 (Datensichtgerät DS 2038, not unlike the IBM PC of the early 1980s!), and many technical processes. The renowned calligrapher and font designer Prof. Hermann Zapf (Hell Digiset fonts, standard PC fonts like Zapf-Dingbats, Palatino, etc.) referred to him as “the Edison of the Graphics Industry” and "the father of digital word processing" (ref. 7).

 

In short: Hell covered all aspects of the decomposition of syllables, letter characters and images into pixels, and the processing, transmission, displaying and printing thereof.

"Ich habe nie etwas gemacht, nur um Geld zu verdienen.
Es ging mir um den Fortschritt und die praktische Anwendung"

"I‘ve never done anything just to earn money.
For me, the important things are progress and practical applications.”

He developed the Hellschreiber during the 1920s, and in 1929 obtained a patent for this "Vorrichtung zur elektrischen Übertragung von Schriftzeichen" or "Apparatus for the electrical transmission of text characters". It went into service with press agencies and news media in 1934. The Hellschreiber is a Typenbildfernschreiber, basically a "character-image tele-writer" or "print-telegraph". Copies of Dr. Hell's patents related to the Hellschreiber are available below.

For those readers not conversant in the German language, I definitely recommend reading the one-page essay "The awful German language" by Mark Twain (ref. 1), one of my favorite authors. I admire the ability of the German language to perfectly reduce an entire concept or sentence into a single word, that requires no further explanation. Nice examples of this are Wechselstromtelegraphiekurzwellenzusatz, Wehrmachtsfunkfernschreibschlüsselnetz, Streifenvorschubgeschwindigkeitsregelung, Schriftzeichenübertragungsgeschwindigkeitsregelung,  and "Wehrmachtsquarzkristallsparschaltungsnachfolger".

In 1926 and 1927 he published a number of amateur radio publications for the do-it-yourself construction of antennas and equipment, including a receiver/printer for text transmissions.

                                   
Hanns Günther and Rudolf Hell                                                Rudolf Hell                   
"Antenne und Erde", 1926.                                        "Anleitung zum Selbstbau eines
            Reprint from 1994                                                     Bildempfängers", Bildfunk 1927   
Wilhelm Herbst Verlag publishing co.,                                    Die Radio-Reihe, Band 21, VIII       
336 pages, ISBN 3-923-925-54-9                                       R.C. Schmidt Verlag, 114 pages 

"Die Selbstherstellung eines Funkbild-Empfangsgerätes" [build your own fax machine], Rudolf Hell, in "Funk", Wochenschrift des Funkwesens, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1926, 6 pp.     new

The Hellschreiber is a simple and robust system that was developed specifically to provide readable, error-free communication, even on low-quality radio and land-line telephone links and in mobile applications. This made it particularly suitable for press agencies, diplomatic and military communications (incl. in combination with crypto machines), communication over high-voltage power-lines (see ref. 29), and… amateur radio! It is based on raster-scan transmission of text characters , and printing the received signals as-is (no decoding required) with a helical scan mechanism. In other words: a simple form of fax, or remote dot-matrix printer. See more details on my "how it works" and "photos" pages.

Wireless services of press agencies such as the Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro (DNB), Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), the Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (AND), and Reuters, transmitted their messages in Hell-format. Reuters started its to the European continent in 1934. Broadcasting was primarily done on long-wave frequencies, to get continental coverage. Ref. 6. In the post-WWII years, agencies such as the Deutsche Allgemeine Nachrichten Agentur (DANA), Deutsche Nachrichtenagentur (DENA), the Deutsche Presse Dienst (DPD), Deutscher Sportverlag (DSV), and Telegrafnoie Agentstvo Sovetskogo Soiuza, (TASS, Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) also used the Hell format. TASS continued Hellschreiber broadcast at least through the mid-1950s.

Map of the wireless Hellschreiber-network of the German DNB press agency ca. 1939 (ref.  6)

The Wehrmacht is the combined army ("Heer"), navy ("Kriegsmarine"), and air force ("Luftwaffe") in Germany from 1935-1945. The Hell-system was used for military field operations. Hence, the Wehrmacht Hellschreibers are also referred to as Feldfernschreibers or Feld-Hell. They entered into service ca. 1935. The German military has operated the Hellschreiber in combination with the famous Enigma encryption system (also see ref. 31, 32), e.g., for message exchanges between headquarters in European capitals (Athens/Greece-Vienna/Austria, ref. 3). Feld-Hell machines were also used by the armed forces of other countries (e.g., until ca. 1960 in Sweden). There are indications that Feld-Hell machine were used by the Spanish armed forces, in particular the national army, during various conflicts: the Spanish Civil War 1936-39, World War II (a Spanish legion in the USSR), and the Ifni Wars (Spanish West Sahara and around Sidi Ifni) 1956-58.

1944 Feld-Hell Fernschreiben (telegram) from General Wenck to Major-General Wisch, congratulating the latter with his promotion *
(courtesy and © M. Lippl; click on image or here to get full size)

Hell Feldfernschreiber and Morse signals intercepted by US during early WWII
(source: ref. 30 (1942))

The Luftwaffe also used Hellschreiber technology for aerial navigation, as part of the "Berhard" system. The ground-station transmitted the momentary azimuth of its narrow-beam antenna in Hell format on VHF (30-33.3 MHz), as the antenna rotated (ref. 3). Its airborne counterpart is a small Hell-printer, the FuG 120 "Bernhardine" ("UKW-Richtstrahl-Drehfunkfeuer Empfänger" or "Receiver for VHF rotational directional beam beacon". It was installed in various aircraft types, esp. night fighter versions, such as the Messerschmitt Me262 (one of my all time favorite aircraft), Junkers Ju 88G, Arado Ar234 (ref. 4), and Dornier Do-335.

In 1944 the Hell Co. developed the "Hell-Geheimschreiber" encryption machine. It used 2³⁵ possible codes for each 7x5 dot character, using a one-time-pad encryption algorithm with a period of 10¹⁴ (see ref. 5). Apparently only half dozen or so of these machines were ever made. They were used in U-Boot, and on Kriegsmarine ships in the Mediterranean in 1945. The Hell Co. resumed the design and manufacture of crypto systems in the 1950s. Commercial use of Hell-systems continued well into the 1980s.

* General Wenck was Chief of Staff of the 1st Panzer Army and youngest general in the German Army during WWII;  Major-General Wisch was Commander of 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler "LSSAH"

LIFE

Rudolf Hell was born on 19 December 1901 at the local freight railway station of Eggmühl (Lower Bavaria, 15 km south of Regensburg, 90 km northeast of Munich) where his father, Karl Hell, was station master for the Königlich-Bayrische Eisenbahngesellschaft (Royal Bavarian Railway Co.). It is here were Rudolf was exposed to telegraphy at an early age. His mother, Lidwina, was a farmer's daughter. Rudolf had two older brothers, Karl and Max. The area was a battlefield in 1809, when Napoleon's army defeated the Austrian army under Archduke Karl.

Karl, Max, and Rudolf (left to right) - 1919
(courtesy C. Onnasch and B. Fuchs, ref. 6, used with permission)

At the age of six, his father was transferred some 160 km (100 mi) north to the town of Eger, then in the Austro-Hungarian empire - now a border-town in the Czech Republic and named "Cheb" since 1945. This is where he attended elementary school for four years. He was a bit of an outsider and didn't hang out with the kids in the street. Apparently he had a pale complexion. Attempts were made to strengthen him, and bring color to his cheeks with red wine.

The railway station of Eggmuehl ca. 1900 - father Hell (station master) at far left
(courtesy C. Onnasch and B. Fuchs, ref. 6, used with permission)

After finishing elementary school, he went to the Rudolphinium Oberrealschule (a form of secondary school). It was not named after young Rudolf, but in honor of King Rudolph I of Habsburg. Rudolf graduated in 1919. He was good at physics and math, mediocre at languages, and was poor at subjects that didn't interest him. The Hell family was fortunate not to be living in Australia, where their surname could have caused them problems (ref. 40).

At the age of 18, he went to the Technische Hochschule München (Technical University in Munich) where he obtained his "Diplom-Ingenieur - Elektrotechnik" (Dipl.-Ing.) degree in 1923 (Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering). This is where he met Prof. Max Dieckmann (ref. 43), who lectured on wireless telegraphy and was forced to rename his lecture "wireless television" to something less provocative. Dieckmann was already involved with scanning of text characters, converting them into electrical pulses and displaying them on a cathode ray tube (CRT), see ref. 44. The CRT was invented in 1895 by Nobel Prize laureate Karl Ferdinand Braun, and is still referred to as "Braunsche Röhre" ("Braun Tube") in German speaking countries and in Japan today. Dieckman was Braun's assistant 1905-1906.

In 1927 Hell obtained his doctorate degree with a dissertation on "a direct indicating radio direction finder for aviation", which became the basis for automatic guidance and auto-pilots of aircraft. The invention was licensed to Telefunken and to a US company for a tidy sum.

"Direktzeigendes funkentelegraphisches Peilverfahren", Rudolf Hell, 1929, 10 pp., Krayn Verlag, Berlin, Hochschulschrift, 1928 doctoral dissertation at Technische Hochschule München; Also appeared in: "Jahrbuch der drahtlosen Telegraphie".

In the late 1920, Hell considered the TV technology to be in an impasse, and switched over to facsimile. In 1929 (at the age of 28) he moved to Berlin-Babelsberg with his wife Martha, and started a development lab as the Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell Company with a dozen employees. The company was located in the first house he owned: workshop in the basement, design office and lab on the ground floor, office in the hallway, private quarters upstairs.

Rudolf Hell bought his first house in Berlin/Babelsberg 
(courtesy C. Onnasch and B. Fuchs, ref. 6, used with permission)

He developed the Hellschreiber in 1929, and that same year he sold the basic rights to the Siemens-Halske (S-H) company for 13,000 Reichsmark (the currency in Germany from 1924-1948) - estimated (by me) to be equivalent to half a million US dollars (2008). The house was paid for with this money, plus the proceeds of the sale of his car, and a small inheritance from his mother.

 

Hell Werke in Berlin-Zehlendorf  (source: ref. 38)
 

Below is are listings for Rudolf Hell, from the telephone book of Berlin. Starting in 1937, he is listed as "Fernmeldetechnisches Institut": Telecommunications Institute.

 

Phonebook entries for Rudolf Hell (top to bottom: 1934-1943)
(source: Berliner Adressbücher 1799-1943, telephone & address books of Berlin)

 

In total, S-H sold about 50,000 Hellschreibers of various types. According to Dr. Hell himself (ref. 6), the invention was a "Aha-Erlebnis" (a.k.a. "eureka moment"; the Greek εύρηκα roughly translates to "I have found it"), much more than the result of tedious research and development.

Figure 2 of the 1929 Hell patent

As with all inventions and patents, it includes elements of so-called "prior art". E.g., there is a French patent, awarded to Bernhard Meyer in 1865, entitled "Helical text reproduction"; a large 1-turn spindle was used in Meyer's autographic telegraph. Cf. ref. 16. It is sometime referred to as "Meyersche Schneide": the "Meyer blade-edge" (cf. C. Lorenz AG patent nr. 744883 below). The earliest patents related to "image telegraphy" date back to the period of 1843-1860 (Bain (Scotland) , Blakewell (England), Caselli (Italy)).

Automatic telegraph of Bernhard Meyer, with paper tape and helical spindle
(Figure 9.2 in ref. 16)

Hell continued the development of Hellschreibers as well as  Hell, like the entire industrial complex, was obliged to support the war effort. This included the development of Morse telegraphy (training) devices, metal detectors, fuses for mines, formation-flying flight-guidance systems. As a subcontractor to the C. Lorenz company, Hell developed and manufactured the UKE 5 and UKE 7 modules of the remote control and guidance receivers of the V2-missile (pp. 121 and 127 in ref. 37). He was also involved with the development of crypto machines. At the end of the war, he had about 1000 employees in his two factories. All was lost by the end of the war, and he started all over again in 1947. This time in Kiel (port city in the far north of Germany).

First Hell Werke in Kiel (source: ref. 38)

Dr. Hell with a Hell tape printer for press services
(courtesy C. Onnasch and B. Fuchs, ref. 6, used with permission)

Around that same time, an engineer at Sony in Japan reverse-engineered the Hellschreiber, and Sony manufactured 10 to 20 machines (ref. 9; photo and description is here). Early 1948, Siemens-Halske handed off their image transmission activities to Dr. Hell, with a 30-year contract. In 1956 he developed and produced the first practical fax machine (Kleinfaxgerät KF108). The received binary image is printed directly onto normal (!) paper with an inked saffire-wheel, rather than by passing electrical current through impregnated paper (e.g., potassium ferro-cyanide or potassium iodide). Some twenty years later, Japanese companies very successfully revived it...

Kleinfaxgerät "KF108d" for DIN-A5 paper size
(with Siemens label, but developed and manufactured (1953-1958) by Hell GmbH)

Hell also revolutionized pre-press processing for printed media (newspapers, magazines, etc.) by developing the fast and precise Klischograph. This provided one-step operation of image scan/transfer and engraving of printing blocks and plates (later expanded for color images). In 1963, he invented the Chromagraph color scanner that provided 4-color separation. He also revolutionized film scanning (exposure) technology, and the developed the first electronic type setting machine in 1964. It had a digital magnetic core "font" memory and CRT-projection onto film. In 1968, the "DS" (Datensichtgerät) was the first computer (Siemens, of course) with a keyboard, CRT, and text editing software. Corporate management, in its usual "wisdom", declared this a dead-end technology and it was subsequently abandoned. The "DS" remained unsurpassed for 15 years, until IBM popularized a similar product in 1983: the PC.

The Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell & Co. KG (KG = Kommanditgesellschaft) company was converted into Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH in 1971, when Siemens AG acquired an 80% majority share. In 1990, Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH merged with Linotype AG. The Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG acquired Linotype-Hell AG in 1995.

On 11 March 2002, this pioneer of telecommunication passed away in Kiel, at the age of 100...

Logo on the dinnerware of the Hell Co. in Kiel

PATENTS

The table below lists a selection of patents that list Rudolf Hell as the inventor, and are related to various aspects of Hellschreibers. Overall, he had over 280 patents in Germany alone. Patents most closely related to the basic principles of Hellschreibers have been highlighted with bold face font. Scanned copies of the original patents are available by clicking on the respective patent number. The table lists the publication date of the patent award. Application for the patent may have been filed several (sometimes many) years prior to the actual award. Also, the date from which the patent rights apply may be different from the filing and the publication date. See the actual patents for details. 

Patent office abbreviations:

OE = Österreichisches Patentamt
AT = Deutsches Reich, Reichspatentamt, Zweigstelle Österreich
DE = Deutsches Reich, Reichspatentamt
RP = Reichspatentamt
DP = Deutsches Patentamt
BD = Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Deutsches Patentamt
US = United States Patent Office

CH = Swiss Patent Office (Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft - Eidgenossisches Amt für geistiges Eigentum)

Patent sources:

DEPATISnet, the on-line public database of the Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA, German Patent and Trademark Office)
PATFT, the on-line public database of the United States Patent and Trademark Office

Interesting development and patent activities in this same area are by Ernst Eduard Kleinschmidt, a German-born US immigrant. During the period 1915-1920 he developed electromechanical printing telegraphs with Charles Krum. Their improved synchronization method was used in the "Springschreiber" ("start-stop teleprinter"). It was licensed to the C. Lorenz company of Berlin-Tempelhof in 1926, and equipment was sold directly to the Deutsche Reichspost that same year. Siemens-Halske developed similar machines that avoided that Kleinschmidt patent (e.g., Blattschreiber "T typ 37"), as did the Creed Co. in the UK.

The Kleinschmidt patent listed below was filed August 1930, well after Hell's original patent filed April 1929. It also includes a double-helix printer spindle and a (notched) character code drum, though the construction is more complex. Kleinschmidt is behind the development of Teletype Corp. Model 17 teleprinter, which appears functionally to be a copy of the Hell Feldfernschreiber.