|
Achievement
Accredited to have invented the printed circuit
Biography
Eisler was
born in Vienna,
and qualified in engineering at Vienna University in 1930. After
some time in [Belgrade] installing radios into trains, he returned
to Vienna where he worked as a printer. In 1934 he was forced out
of his job by the Austrian fascists and, armed with some patents,
he left for England in 1936.
Initially unemployed and - with no work-permit - unemployable, he
began to make a radio with a printed circuit board in his Hempstead
boarding house. While trying to sell his ideas, he was taken on by
the Odeon to work on their cinema technology, where he had the idea
of covering the seats with a blotchy yellow fabric. The cinemas were
plagued by children who would wipe their ice cream on the seats,
but with the new fabric, any sticky seats could marked with 'reserved'
signs and removed for cleaning at the end of each day with no customers
any wiser or stickier.
Eisler succeeded in evacuating some of his family from Austria,
but on the outbreak of the Second World War was interred as an enemy
alien for a time. Following his release, he eventually managed to
convince a lithograph company in Camberwell to take on his idea of
printed circuits in 1941. As a sign of faith, he signed the contract
without reading it and unwittingly signed away his future rights.
In 1943 he took out a patent for using printed circuits in a variety
of products: cables, interconnections, aerials, transformers, motors,
valves and heated wallpaper. However, he found no demand for his
product until the Americans started work on the proximity
fuse to bring down V1 rockets, and for which printed circuits
were vital.
Following the end of the war, the USA released the secret of printed
circuits, and from 1948 all electronics in airborne instruments were
printed. He established a new firm, Technograph, but disagreements
mounted and Eisler slowly moved away from the company. In 1957 he
resigned to start freelance work on heating films for floor and wall
coverings, as well as for foods such as fish fingers. Heated wallpaper
caught the popular imagination and briefly looked viable until the
discovery of North Sea gas ensured cheaper gas heating and dealt
the wallpaper a fatal blow.
Eisler was responsible for a number of other popular developments,
including the rear windscreen heater, heated clothes and also a pizza
warmer, to enable a customer to keep his takeout pizza warm by plugging
the box into a battery powered by the car. Like so many of Eisler's
inventions, however, it never made the transition from idea to commercial
success.
Chronology
1907 born in Vienna
Honors and awards
Bibliography
|
