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Our Roots: 1998

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1998 - Biometrics goes public

In the year 1998, Dr. Manfred Bromba (who was responsible at Siemens for the innovation topic "fingerprint" at that time) presented the possibility to replace passwords by a fingertip. At a Siemens booth at CeBIT 98 the public could admire the first demonstrator (picture to the right) which captured the fingerprint with a newly developed semiconductor sensor and sent it to a notebook which decided whether the finger pattern was identical with a beforehand stored reference by using sophisticated algorithms. The sensor was integrated into the battery part of a Siemens cellphone S10 and initially transferred the finger image to the notebook by cable. Only the correct fingerprint returned the PIN and this way unlocked the cellphone without requiring the user to memorize the PIN. The picture below shows a design study based on the SL10 from Siemens.

CeBIT 98: Dr. Manfred Bromba (right) with two colleagues

Design study of a SL10 with fngerprint sensor (today hold by Siemens museum)

This innovation caused an enormous echo in the media. So it was no surprise that also the Executive Board of Siemens became inspired by the possibilities of fingerprint recognition. The photograph below shows Heinrich von Pierer - one of the most successful and at the same time most popular chairmen of Siemens - talking with Manfred Bromba (left hand side).

left: Dr. Manfred Bromba - right: Dr. Heinrich von Pierer

Fortunately, von Pierer was more interested in the background of our innovation than in its demonstration. This was because the first sensor prototypes available at CeBIT 98 did not only react on the pattern of the fingerprint but also on the constitution of its owner. If the owner was excited (and he was indeed excited in the presence of VIPs!), the sensor preferred to show a black image without any recognizable pattern...

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Last update: 2010-12-14