
Artur Fischer, Inventor with More Patents Than Edison, Dies at 96 - raphar
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/business/international/artur-fischer-inventor-with-more-patents-than-edison-dies-at-96.html
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gilgoomesh
It's interesting to realize that seemingly commonplace objects had a sole
inventor. I've used dozens of drywall anchors in my house that look identical
to the one in the picture (albeit a little smaller).

And a survivor from the losing side of the Battle of Stalingrad. With respect
to both sides, that's a rare membership.

> Adolf Hitler paid a surprise Christmas visit in 1939. “I had made a model
> airplane to give my mother as a Christmas present,” Mr. Fischer told Der
> Spiegel. “Then my commanding officer said that I was the best mechanic and I
> should give the plane to Hitler. It was a horrible time.”

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stevep98
He also came up with FischerTechnik, which is a superb building-block system
far sturdier than Lego.

[http://www.fischertechnik.de/en/Home.aspx](http://www.fischertechnik.de/en/Home.aspx)

Had a lot of fun with this in my childhood.

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lispm
In school, when I was 9 years old long ago, we had something like these:

[http://www.schule-trifft-
technik.de/product_info.php/cPath/9...](http://www.schule-trifft-
technik.de/product_info.php/cPath/952/products_id/3158)

A class set of a basic Fischertechnik mechanics box. We had a weekly course
where we were building various things. The hardest part was to get everything
back in the box where it belongs...

Fischer wanted to get kids interested into actually building technical things,
as a foundation for the next generation of engineers.

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Freak_NL
A classic example of Germany's Wirtschaftswunder. Today you would be hard
pressed to find a home where his company's wall plugs are not used somewhere —
at least in Europe.

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lmilcin
Comparing number of patents is like comparing number of lines of code.

