1974
In the mid-1970s, Germany had no scientific facility concerned with telecommunications that could compare with the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut and Deutsche Bundespost’s research institute. The conversion of the HHI into a limited liability company (GmbH) should strengthen the focus on telecommunications even further.
The transformation into a GmbH marked a fresh start within the history of the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut. An internal inaugural brochure, published by the Institute on December 13th, 1974, outlined the new goals and functions of the facility, as the structure was undergoing a significant change. From 1975, for example, there was a central department for administrative duties as well as five specialist departments: General Basics, System Structures, Audiovisual, Relaying and Transmission, and Planning.
In the inaugural brochure, it was pointed out that apart from the Research Institute of the German Federal Post Office (Deutsche Bundespost DBP) there was no comparable institution in Germany that dealt comprehensively with telecommunications. For this reason, the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut was poised to work more closely with DBP in investigating issues of telecommunications. The brochure stated “general basics (including system technology)”, “audiovisual (including display technology and user behavior studies)” and “technology of message transmission and relaying” as the focus areas.
In addition to the Institute's own research, greater emphasis would now be placed on commissioned work for the Federal Ministry of Post and Telecommunications and for industry. According to the brochure, this included “research into new types of telecommunication processes, methods, components, and systems.”
To ensure that the Institute could meet these challenges, however, additional staff was required: The inaugural brochure thus announced that the number of staff would be increased by 50%. Basic financing was also to be given a considerable raise and was set to increase from 1.8 million DM in 1974 to 3.2 million DM in 1975.