When the American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon on 20 July 1969, the spectacle was watched on television by over 500 million people. Only insiders are privy to the fact that high-tech components from the city of Wuppertal which were used on board Apollo 11 contributed to the successful completion of the space mission.
More specifically, the inertial navigation which made it possible for the lunar module to land accurately was fitted out with extremely precise miniature bearings that had been machined by Thielenhaus using Microfinish machines.
Numerous other examples of technical brilliance from the automotive, anti-friction bearing, aviation, aerospace and medical engineering industries would have been inconceivable had it not been for Ernst Thielenhaus, the son of the company’s founder, who was developing an advanced method for surface finishing and had filed numerous patents back in the 1950s.