Edward Kleinschmidt

Edward Ernst Kleinschmidt (September 9, 1876 – August 22, 1977) was a German-American engineer. He was one of the inventors of the teleprinter, and obtained 118 patents over the course of his lifetime.

Career Born in Bremen, Germany, in 1876, Kleinschmidt immigrated to the United States at the age of 8. Keyboard perforators were a development from Charles Wheatstone's perforator of 1858, a hand-operated device which produced a punched paper tape for use in automatic telegraph transmitters.

Soon after, he set up the Kleinschmidt Electric Company. With George Seely, he developed signaling equipment for railways. The pair began their work in 1906, and by 1910, they were able to demonstrate a completed device. The signaling technology is still used by railways throughout North America. In 1919, shortly after the Morkrum company obtained their patent for a start-stop synchronizing method for code telegraph systems, which made possible the practical teleprinter, Kleinschmidt filed an application titled "Method of and Apparatus for Operating Printing Telegraphs" which included an improved start-stop method. In 1931, Kleinschmidt set up Kleinschmidt Laboratories, presently known as Kleinschmidt Inc,

Kleinschmidt died in Canaan, Connecticut, of heart disease in 1977 at the age of 100.