Born in Gehrden, Germany, Richter was influenced early by the books of Walther de Haas ("Hanns Günther").
Already in 1934, in cooperation with Günther, Richter published his first textbook for radio engineers, Schule des Funktechnikers, which immediately became popular.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Richter worked as a development engineer and engineering group leader at the radio research group of the Aeronautical Research Institute in Oberpfaffenhofen (Forschungsinstitut für Flugfunk) under Prof. Max Dieckmann (today, the RF and Radar laboratory of DLR, the German Aerospace Center).
In the late 1950s, Richter designed the "Kosmos" radio and electronics experimental kits sold by publisher Franckh-Kosmos.
He has however been criticized for superficiality – while some books contain detailed building instructions along with pictures of sample kits, others (e.g. Schaltungsbuch der Transistortechnik) are little more than commented collections of industry application circuits.