Helmut Hoelzer
was a
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
V-2 rocket
The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
engineer who was brought to the United States under
Operation Paperclip
The Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War I ...
. Hoelzer was the inventor and constructor of the world's first electronic analog computer.
Life
In October 1939, while working for the
Telefunken
Telefunken was a German radio and television producer, founded in Berlin in 1903 as a joint venture between Siemens & Halske and the ''AEG (German company), Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ("General electricity company").
Prior to ...
electronics firm in Berlin, Hoelzer met with
Ernst Steinhoff,
Hermann Steuding, and
Wernher von Braun regarding guide beams for a flying body.
[p. 107] In late 1940 at
Peenemünde
Peenemünde (, ) is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is part of the ''Amt (country subdivision), Amt'' (collective municipality) of Used ...
, Hoelzer was head of the guide beam division
[p. 140] (assistant
Henry Otto Hirschler[H. Otto Hirschler, 87, Aided Space Program]
/ref>), which developed a guide-plane system which alternates a transmitted signal from two antennas a short distance apart, as well as a vacuum tube mixing device () which corrected for momentum that would perturb an object that had been moved back on-track.[p. 104] By the fall of 1941, Hoelzer's "mixing device" was used to provide V-2 rocket
The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
rate measurement instead of rate gyros.[p. 106]
Then at the beginning of 1942, Hoelzer built an analog computer
An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computation machine (computer) that uses physical phenomena such as Electrical network, electrical, Mechanics, mechanical, or Hydraulics, hydraulic quantities behaving according to the math ...
to calculate and simulate[ ]V-2 rocket
The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the S ...
trajectories[p. 106] Hoelzer's team also developed the Messina telemetry system. After evacuating Peenemünde for the Alpenfestung (Alpine Fortress), Hoelzer returned to Peenemünde
Peenemünde (, ) is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-eastern Germany. It is part of the ''Amt (country subdivision), Amt'' (collective municipality) of Used ...
via motorcycle to look for portions of his PhD dissertation[ prior to surrendering to United States forces at the end of World War II.
Hoelzer was a student of Alwin Walther.]
Family
One of his grandchildren is Olympic swimmer Margaret Hoelzer.
References
Sources
*
External links
Helmut Hoelzer Collection, The University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holzer, Helmut
1912 births
1996 deaths
Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni
Early spaceflight scientists
German aerospace engineers
V-weapons people
NASA people
German rocket scientists
German spaceflight pioneers
Operation Paperclip
Engineers from Thuringia
People from Wartburgkreis