Fritz Karl Preikschat
Open-knowledge reference entry
Fritz Karl Preikschat (September 11, 1910 – September 2, 1994) was a German-American, electrical and telecommunications engineer and inventor. He had more than three German patents and more than 23 U.S. patents, including a dot matrix teletypewriter (Germany, 1957), a blind-landing system for airports (1965), a phased array system for satellite communications (1971), a hybrid car system (1982), and a scanning laser diode microscope for particle analysis (1989). He was the only engineer to work on both sides of the Space Race: a lab manager for NII-88 (TsNIIMash) in Soviet Union (1946–1952) and a lead engineer for the Space division of Boeing (1960s).
Early career in Germany
In 1934, he graduated from Hindenburg Polytechnic in Oldenburg, Germany with a degree in "Elektrotechnik" (electrical engineering). He then served in a minesweeper unit of Kriegsmarine (German Navy).
From 1940 to 1945 (during WW2), he worked as an engineer and lab manager in the radar group of GEMA (see Radar in World War II). At the end of WW2, his family fled to Dresden and survived (except for one relative) the Bombing of Dresden in World War II. His family then resettled as refugees in the Bavarian town of Amberg.
Contributor to the Soviet Union's rocket and satellite programs (1946–1952)
In 1946, he was one of the more than two thousand German specialists forcibly brought to the Soviet Union under Operation Osoaviakhim. He was then one of the more than 170 German specialists – headed by Helmut Gröttrup – brought to Branch 1 of NII-88 on Gorodomlya Island in Lake Seliger. From 1946 to 1952, he was an engineer and head of the high frequency lab, working on a guidance system, among other things, for the early Soviet rocket program.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fritz Karl Preikschat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.