Many young people have to pay their own way if they want to go to college, and this was especially true in postwar Germany. Back then, tuition was still charged and no student loans were available yet – quite different from today’s public universities. Georg dealt with this situation by doing what he loved most throughout his life: working with technology. At first he only advised clients, establishing a “radio frequency office” for this purpose. The parallels to the situation in Germany today are also conspicuous here; it’s possible to earn money by providing services, but many bureaucratic hurdles have to be overcome. Back then, these took the form of laws that greatly restricted the manual trades. They initially prevented him from setting up a business.
Georg earned his first income on May 15, 1946, a date that figures more prominently in the company’s history than when it was granted an official license to operate in August 1946; it has therefore been regarded as the date of its founding ever since. He continued studying and advising clients, and in 1947 also began developing his own electronic devices. His inventions included a dual-beam oscilloscope pressure transducer and an experimental transmitter.
In 1948, finally, the company of “Georg Spinner – Elektrophysikalische Geräte” (Electronic Equipment) was officially registered. By that time, his wife Erika had begun keeping the cash book. The business was based in his parents’ house in Dachauer Strasse – a couple of makeshift rooms in the backyard were used for lab work and designing and assembling products. The first employees arrived in 1949.
But the young company soon outgrew the cramped and fairly primitive conditions in Dachauer Strasse, which also lacked the three-phase current that was urgently needed to power the machines.
Georg and Erika then found 200-square-meter lot in Linprunstrasse less than a kilometer away that met all of their needs, and it was their official base for the next 10 years.
Leave a Reply