The most important scientific, technical, entrepreneurial and intellectual innovations in Germany were honoured for the 35th time. Sigmar Gabriel, Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy acted as patron. Guest speaker at the gala was EU Commissioner Günther H. Oettinger.

Jan Hofer, Senior Newsreader on ARD’s television news who hosted the event, welcomed Thomas Bayer, Head of Galaxie Drive Systems at WITTENSTEIN AG, on stage and prompted him to describe the creative path to such a radical invention. “To begin with, we had to leave all insights and dogmas from five hundred years of gear and gearwheel history behind us. It was Leonardo da Vinci who conceptualized a transmission back in the fifteenth century and virtually the same principles have continued to apply to this day”, Bayer explained. Undeterred, engineers at WITTENSTEIN sometimes wondered if there wasn’t a better way. The Galaxie^® Drive System is proof that there is still room for disruptive innovations in this field. Bayer summed up the eight-year development phase as follows: “Sometimes you really do have to reinvent the wheel – or at least the gearwheel!”.

This latest award is renewed confirmation of the new gearhead generation’s enormous impact: with its significantly higher efficiency, the Galaxie^® Drive System marks a quantum leap in terms of productivity for the drive solutions of tomorrow. The high performance gearhead, where each tooth is an independent and dynamic entity and hydrodynamic tooth contact is made over the full surface, beats all similar sized alternatives hands down when it comes to stiffness, load carrying capacity, freedom from backlash and precision.

This latest award is renewed confirmation of the new gearhead generation’s enormous impact: with its significantly higher efficiency, the Galaxie^® Drive System marks a quantum leap in terms of productivity for the drive solutions of tomorrow. The high performance gearhead, where each tooth is an independent and dynamic entity and hydrodynamic tooth contact is made over the full surface, beats all similar sized alternatives hands down when it comes to stiffness, load carrying capacity, freedom from backlash and precision.

WITTENSTEIN AG is one of four winners of the Innovation Award of the German Economy 2016 alongside Schott AG (“Large Companies” category), Trumpf GmbH and Co. KG (“Industrie 4.0”) and Hydrogenious Technologies GmbH (“Start-Ups”). More information: www.innovationspreis.com 

Pictures:
1. Professor Dieter Spath, Chairman of the Board and CEO WITTENSTEIN AG (2nd from left) and Galaxie ‘inventor’ Thomas Bayer (right) were presented with the Innovation Award of the German Economy for the Galaxie^® Drive System last Saturday evening by Professor Klaus von Klitzing, Nobel Laureate in Physics (2nd from right). Jan Hofer, Senior Newsreader on ARD’s television news (left) hosted the festive gala in Darmstadt. (Photo: Andreas Varnhorn)

2. Winner of the Innovation Award of the German Economy: WITTENSTEIN’s revolutionary Galaxie^® Drive System (Photo: WITTENSTEIN AG)