“My work as an inventor is far from over, because What interests me is finding the solution to any problem that arises.“, said Artur Fischer in 2014, when the European Parliament awarded him for his work. He was then 94 years old and had patented more than 1,100 productsa record that surpassed the 1,093 patents registered by Tomas Alva Edison during his life.
Most of Fischer’s inventions are far from dazzling, because they do not attract attention, but they have a virtue that often goes unnoticed: they are within reach of anyone and solve problems of everyday life, such as fixing library shelves in a wall with a dowel and screw, slice a hard-boiled egg with a single maneuver or illuminate the scene to take a photo; They also serve to entertain children, such as toys that are assembled with blocks and other construction elements that allow them to learn the basic concepts of technical issues in a fun way and develop their creativity, Fischertechnik. For things like that, The European Patent Office considers him “the most successful inventor of all time”.
Fischer’s history as an inventor does not escape the model of many of his colleagues, although it surpasses it, and one can count on a career that begins in a small home workshop to culminate in a large company, in this case Fischer Holding, a company with thousands of employees and subsidiaries in 50 countries around the world that invoices almost 700 million dollars per year.
The son of a tailor and an ironer, Artur Fischer was born on December 31, 1919 in Tumlingen, now part of Waldachtal, Germany. He left school at the age of 13 to become an apprentice locksmith in a workshop in Stuttgart. It was the 1930s and like many young people he joined the Hitler Youth, in his case with the aspiration that they would be a way to join the Luftwaffe. He wanted to be an airplane pilot, but he couldn’t for two reasons: he had vision problems and he didn’t have enough studies; They allowed him, instead, to join as a mechanic and assigned to the Palatinate region.
During World War II he was sent to the Eastern Front and participated in the siege of Stalingrad, where he was saved from being captured by the Red Army in one of the last planes that evacuated soldiers before the surrender of German troops. He was then assigned to Italy, where he was captured by the Allies and sent to a prison camp in Great Britain. He was released in 1946 and was able to return to Germany, where he found work in an electrical engineering plant.
While working at the plant, he set up a workshop in his home, where he began to develop his first designs using military scrap metal. What can be considered Fischer’s first invention was a gadget commissioned by a textile company, a loom switch he never patented. The next one responded to a need of his own, that of taking photos inside his house. It was 1948 and at that time magnesium lamps were used, too dangerous to take photos in the narrow space of the apartment where he lived with his wife and his little daughter. He then developed a flash lamp – a flash – that he managed to make work synchronized with the camera. When he presented the invention at a technology fair, the engineers at Agfa They did not hesitate for a moment before purchasing the rights to use it.
With the money that patent provided him, Fischer took his first employees and started a small company. It can be said that he dedicated himself to solving any technical problem that was presented to him, taking care to patent the gadget before delivering it. He made the big leap in 1956, with what remains his most famous invention today: the expansion anchor, the “Fischer plug” that everyone knows today, that adapts to the surface that is drilled and joins it inextricably, whether brick, plaster or concrete.
The idea came to him when a balustrade manufacturer asked him for an element that would allow him to securely fix wall furniture. The inventor’s response was a kind of plastic “plug” with slots and teeth that would allow the screws to be captured and prevent them from bending when entering the wall. Not only did he patent the idea, but from it he developed all types of anchors and pins, made of plastic and steel, including some specific ones for trauma medicine, which uses them to resolve bone fractures.
Fischer himself told how his passion for inventing objects or mechanisms became a habit in the face of any problem that arose and recounted, as an example, an episode that occurred in a hotel where he was spending his holidays. In small talk, the owner of the establishment complained that guests had difficulty cutting the hard-boiled egg served with breakfast. Days later, already in his design workshop, the inventor developed the device that everyone knows today, where the hard-boiled egg is placed and when a kind of “lid” with edges is lowered, it is cut into perfect slices. Faced with similar problems, over the years, he developed bottle holders, CD holders, car glove boxes, drills, mortars with cement aggregate and even specific ventilation mechanisms for air conditioning.
Another of Arthur Fischer’s most popular inventions arose from the need to give a different gift. In the mid-1960s, with the company already established, the inventor sought to make a Christmas gift that was novel, intended for the children of his employees and contractors. It was just that, but the result became one of the most famous toys of the 20th century. Fischer devised a set of blocks and other elements that could be interlocked to build different objects. This is how the first Fischertechnick set was born, a pioneer of other very similar games, such as Lego oh go playmobillater developed by other companies.
That first Artur Fischer workshop developed until it gave rise to around fifty factories spread across more than thirty countries. The star product continues to be the famous “taco”, whose production reaches astronomical levels: about 14 million per day. Those who visit the central factory, in Tumlingen, in the Black Forest, are surprised by the pace of work achieved by a chain of robots controlled by a group of specialized workers who verify that everything is going well without making any physical effort.
Despite its impressive development, Fischer Holding remains a family business, currently run by Arthur’s son Klaus. The inventor gave him the management in the mid-1980s, but not because he wanted to retire but to dedicate more time to his passion: inventing new products in the design office.
He continued doing so almost until his death, at the age of 96, on January 27, 2016, in Waldachtal in the Black Forest, where his remains were buried. If you review the profiles that were published due to his death, almost all of them repeat one of his phrases, which defines his philosophy as an inventor: “You don’t invent what you don’t have, but rather what you have played with.”.
