| Helmut Hoelzer | |
| Native Name: | Helmut Hölzer |
| Birth Date: | 27 February 1912 |
| Birth Place: | Bad Liebenstein, Thüringen, German Empire |
| Death Place: | Huntsville, Alabama, United States |
| Fields: | Electrical Engineering, Applied mathematics |
| Alma Mater: | Technische Hochschule Darmstadt |
| Work Institutions: | 1933-tbd: teaching 1939: Telefunken (Berlin) 1939-1945: Peenemünde 1940s-1950s: Fort Bliss/WSPG 1950s-1950s: Redstone Arsenal 1950s-1960s: ABMA 1960-1970s: Marshall Space Flight Center (Director, Computation Division)[1] |
| Known For: | Designing an electronic simulator for the V-2 rocket control system.[2] [3] |
Helmut Hoelzer[4] was a Nazi Germany V-2 rocket engineer who was brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip. Hoelzer was the inventor and constructor of the world's first electronic analog computer.[5]
In October 1939, while working for the Telefunken electronics firm in Berlin, Hoelzer met with Ernst Steinhoff,[6] Hermann Steuding, and Wernher von Braun regarding guide beams for a flying body.[7] In late 1940 at Peenemünde, Hoelzer was head of the guide beam division[8] (assistant Henry Otto Hirschler[9]), which developed a guide-plane system which alternates a transmitted signal from two antennas a short distance apart, as well as a vacuum tube mixing device (German: Mischgerät)[10] which corrected for momentum that would perturb an object that had been moved back on-track.[11] By the fall of 1941, Hoelzer's "mixing device" was used to provide V-2 rocket rate measurement instead of rate gyros.[12]
Then at the beginning of 1942, Hoelzer built an analog computer to calculate and simulate[9] [13] [14] V-2 rocket trajectories[15] [16] Hoelzer's team also developed the Messina telemetry system.[17] After evacuating Peenemünde for the Alpenfestung (Alpine Fortress), Hoelzer returned to Peenemünde via motorcycle to look for portions of his PhD dissertation[4] prior to surrendering to United States forces at the end of World War II.
Hoelzer was a student of Alwin Walther.
One of his grandchildren is Olympic swimmer Margaret Hoelzer.