Erwin Sick began his professional career in 1924 with an apprenticeship in optometry and then attended the College of Optics and Precision Mechanics in Göttingen.
From 1934 to 1939 Erwin Sick held various positions at Siemens, Bosch and Askania Werke AG initially as a designer and later as an engineer.
Because he was politically unencumbered, Erwin Sick received his license to "Practice his profession as an engineer" on 26 September 1946 by the American military government.
In June 1951 "German Inventors and Innovations Fair" was held in Munich where Sick presented his first finished wooden model of a photoelectric sensor and received a certificate "for creative performance".
The successful patent application of the invented photoelectric sensors and autocollimation on 20 October was a breakthrough in technical devices and lead to the development of an entire equipment program.