Rudolf Hell was born in 1901 and invented his first device, the so-called Hellschreiber in 1925. It was patented in 1929 when he started his own company in Babelsberg, Berlin (Germany) [2]. Before and during World War II, he produced Hellschreibers 1 for the German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. After WWII, the company was re-established and Rudolf Hell kept inventing.



Rudolf Hell is also the inventor and patent-holder of the modern Fax (1956), a colour scanner (1963) and a CRT-based computer typesetter (Datensichtgerät, 1965). Computer-based typesetters would be used by the printing industry for the next several decades, and is now commonly known as Desktop Publishing (DTP).



During his lifetime, Hell was awarded numerous times. He received, for example, the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Werner von Siemens Ring and the Eduard Rhein Ring of Honour. In 1977, Rudolf Hell was awarded the Gutenberg Prize by the City of Mainz. In his Laudation, Prof. Hermann Zapf (known for his Zapf-Dingbats and Palatino typefaces), called him the Edison of the Graphic Industry [4].