Erhard Kietz

Dr. Erhard Karl Kietz (August 22, 1909 – April 6, 1982) was a German-born physicist, who researched frequency constancy of video signals.

From March 1938 until May 1945, he conducted independent research in the same laboratory as physicist in the fields of television, high frequency and amplification technology.

On June 15, 1945, they, with their two young children and his lab colleague, Dr. Herbert Mangold, with wife and toddler daughter, were evacuated by the U.S.A. military to the outskirts of Munich.

A middle ear infection during the difficult last months of the war left the bacteria in his system and lack of penicillin in the post-war turmoil rendered a cure unattainable.

On May 15, 1956, he, with his family which now included 6 children ages 11 to 9 months, boarded the Dutch freighter Witmarsum of the Independent Gulf Lines in Hamburg, Germany for emigration to the United States.

There was no work in his field, however; so in September 1956, the family moved to Altadena, California, on the advice of a German friend, who had emigrated a few years before.

Here Dr. Erhard Kietz was employed in the research division of Consolidated Electrodynamics Corporation in Pasadena, where he participated in the design of instrumentation recording equipment under Adrian B. Cook.

In July 1971, he, along with his two youngest daughters, who were still teenagers (his wife died in a car accident in 1967), departed New York for Bremerhaven on the passenger ship Bremen, locating in Dankoltsweiler (Baden-Württemberg), Germany.

A middle ear infection in his youth left him hard of hearing which put an end to any dreams of orchestral participation later on.

He did, however, retain an ear for perfect pitch (from another room in the house during his daughter's piano practice: "F-SHARP, not F, can't you hear that!").

He had great love for and commitment to his family, cognizant of needing to impart guiding values to his children, but most often coming across with an authoritative tone that rendered his children unreceptive at the time; yet in adulthood they recognized the intangible gifts that were imparted to them, such as intellectual curiosity, love of classical music, observation of nature, an interest in astronomy or an adventuresome spirit to discover the world around them near and far, be it on bicycle day trips through the forests to the villages south of Munich or on mountain hikes, or in California by bus, later in a used station wagon, to see that State's natural beauties.

"Erhard Karl Kietz’ scientific career began with his doctorate dissertation, released in February 1938, published in Dresden in 1939, Versuche über die Frequenzkonstanz elektrisch angetriebener Stimmgabeln (Experiments about the frequency constancy of electric tuning forks).

The two daunting problems that needed to be solved were the high demand on time stability at playback and overcoming the bandwidth constraints of the hitherto existing magnetic recording technology.

Dr. Erhard Kietz authored a Summary of Problems and Activities in Electronic Time Base Correction, released for Ampex Corporation on June 15, 1960.

[8] In March 1967, he and his colleague Sid Damron authored the technical paper Digital Recording at Exceptionally High Bit Rates, Reliability and Density.