VEB Robotron
East German manufacturer of computers and consumer electronics
VEB Kombinat Robotron (German: [vaʊ eː beː kɔmbɪnaːt ʁobotʁɔn]) (or simply Robotron) was the largest East German electronics manufacturer. It was headquartered in Dresden and employed 68,000 people in 1989. Its products included personal computers, SM EVM minicomputers, the ESER mainframe computers, various computer peripherals as well as microcomputers, radios, television sets and other items including cookie press Kleingebäckpresse Typ 102.
Divisions
Robotron managed several different divisions:
VEB Robotron-Elektronik Dresden (headquarters) — typewriters, personal computers, minicomputers, mainframes
VEB Robotron-Meßelektronik Dresden — measurement and testing devices, home computers
VEB Robotron-Projekt Dresden — software department
VEB Robotron-Buchungsmaschinenwerk Karl-Marx-Stadt — personal computers, floppy disk drives
VEB Robotron-Elektronik Hoyerswerda — monitors, power supply units
VEB Robotron-Elektronik Radeberg — mainframes, radio receivers, portable television receivers, directional radio systems
VEB Robotron Vertrieb Dresden, Berlin and Erfurt — sales departments
VEB Robotron-Elektronik Zella-Mehlis — computer terminals, hard disk drives
VEB Robotron-Büromaschinenwerk Sömmerda — personal computers, printers, electronic calculators (Soemtron 220, 222, 224), invoicing machines (EFA 380), punched card indexers and sorters (Soemtron 432).
VEB Robotron Elektronik Riesa — printed circuit boards
VEB Robotron-Anlagenbau Leipzig — general contractor, design and assembly for computer and process calculation systems in the GDR and export, training center
On 30 June 1990, Kombinat Robotron was liquidated and its divisions were converted into corporations. In the 1990s, these companies were sold, e.g. to Siemens Nixdorf and IBM, or liquidated. Less than five percent of the employees were able to switch to successor companies. However, the abundance of highly qualified workers promoted the subsequent settlement of various companies in the region.
Robotron Datenbank-Software GmbH is a company which emerged from one of the former divisions of Kombinat Robotron.
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This entry incorporates text from “VEB Robotron” 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.