Artur Fischer

[3] [4] In the second world war, Fischer worked as an aircraft mechanic and survived the Battle of Stalingrad, leaving on the last plane.

After returning to his hometown in 1946, he found work as an assistant at an engineering company and began making lighters and loom switches out of military scrap.

Inspired by his inability to photograph his young daughter indoors, his insight was to synchronize an electronic flash with the camera shutter.

[2] This was the most universally suitable and widely adopted version of John Joseph Rawlings 1911 invention, the ‘Rawlplug’ a fibre-bonded wallplug.

He got started on the problem when a hotel owner complained to him that his guests, on opening their boiled eggs for breakfast, always made a mess.