Edward Kleinschmidt
More info
- Born
- 9 September 1876
- Died
- August 1977
- Nationality
- German-American
- Known for
- Teleprinter
German-American inventor whose teleprinter became the foundation of the Teletype Corporation.
Kleinschmidt (1876–1977) emigrated from Germany and developed in the US a series of teleprinters that printed received telegrams automatically. His company competed with the Morkrum Company, founded by Joy Morton and Charles Krum, for the same market. In 1924 the two merged into Morkrum-Kleinschmidt, renamed the Teletype Corporation in 1928 and bought by AT&T's Western Electric in 1930. The teleprinter's start-stop principle — framing each character between start and stop bits — still lives on in serial data transmission today. Kleinschmidt kept inventing well past ninety and reached the age of one hundred.