Pictures of the Future      Fall 2005

100 Years of Corporate Research at Siemens

Three Nobel Prize laureates in physics have worked at Siemens. From left: Gustav Hertz, Dennis Gabor and Ernst Ruska. And other Siemens researchers have also earned worldwide renown, including Walter Schottky and Heinrich Welker. Today, top results are usually achieved by teams, rather than individual researchers

In 1905, researcher Werner Bolton became head of the first corporate research laboratory at Siemens—the forerunner of today’s Corporate Technology (CT). To commemorate this anniversary, Pictures of the Future is presenting a retro­spective that lists the most important research and development milestones at Siemens—milestones that made a key contribution to the company’s international renown (see chart, below). Many other important events in the company’s lively history (chart bottom) must remain unmentioned due to lack of space. And although various Group labs also developed solutions just as basic as those created by Corporate Research, only a few of these are mentioned here. This special section of Pictures of the Future is meant to create a link between the history of the company, its current research projects, and future trends. Claus Weyrich, who has led Corporate Technology since 1996, explains the transformation of industrial research over the past decades Interview. The current configuration of Siemens Corporate Technology, which was established by Heinz Beckurts and Hans Günter Danielmeyer between the 1980s and the mid ‘90s, is the result of a restructuring project that was commissioned by none other than Klaus Kleinfeld, who is now CEO of Siemens AG.