T&M Milestones
Rohde & Schwarz:
75 Years of Driving Innovation
Higher, faster, more precise – the T&M industry is almost Olympic in nature, and not only since yesterday.
Numerous new technologies and increasingly higher
frequencies are challenging T&M. For 75 years now,
Rohde&Schwarz has been in business and successfully combining seasoned know-how with strong innovation. And the company‘s T&M solutions for wireless
communications, general electronics and microwave
are often ahead of their time. A historical snapshot.
The present – 2008: Rohde&Schwarz is a leading global supplier of T&M equipment for wireless communications and
electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). Every second mobile
phone is produced or developed using T&M equipment
from the Munich-based electronics group. Manufacturers of
electronics around the world rely on high-quality products
from the T&M expert – regardless whether in spectrum and
network analysis, signal generation or power measurement.
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rect customer care, and the company‘s great manufacturing
depth translates into maximum quality and precision. But
how did all of this start?
We glance back to the year 1932. Even before founding the
company, Dr. Lothar Rohde and Dr. Hermann Schwarz de-
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Starting in autumn 1933, the company launched operations
under the name „Physikalisch-Technisches Entwicklungsla-
bor Dr. L. Rohde und Dr. H. Schwarz“ – now known as
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seller was the WIP interference wavemeter from 1933, sold
throughout the world for more than 20 years.
Since its early days, the company‘s objective has been
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achieve high integration. To avoid the use of numerous
separate test instruments, the company in 1952 developed
the URI electronic multimeter – a small, ten kilogram tester.
Likewise in the 1950s, the T&M expert became a pioneer in
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of S-parameters and to display them in a Smith chart. A
further highlight from this era was the compact SWOB wideband sweep generator, whose successors were considered a
standard in TV set alignment for years to come.
Germany‘s Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) and the
continued general evolution of technology led to a strong
increase in the number of electronic components and instruments over the following decades. EMC measurements
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by using its expertise in receiver development as a spring-
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company equipped Europe‘s most advanced and largest
EMC anechoic chamber in Greding, Germany.
During this phase, Rohde&Schwarz step-by-step gained a
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