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Comment by analognoise | Hacker News Reader

I thought they were "kept alive" because they weren't competing with Western devices; once the wall fell it was pretty clear how far behind they were, and they were quickly bought/dismantled as they weren't competitive.

I couldn't find any good details/stories about them though, or the industry during that time. I wonder if someone will chime in with a good source, it sounds like an interesting time to read about.

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You may look up the already mentioned Robotron, or Messelektronik. Further Zentrallaboratorium für Rundfunk- und Fernsehempfangstechnik (ZRF). The history of Manfred von Ardenne is interesting as well (first electronic television 1931, but also helping sowjet a-bomb).

There are many interesting stories just floating under the surface, but the gist is that the GDR industry was actually quite competitive for singular projects right after WW2, but then fell behind in the 60's and 70's (but again with very few exceptions where the GDR remained somewhat competitive, like mechanical engineering).

For instance the first German jet airliner was being developed (but eventually cancelled) in Dresden by former Junkers engineers returning from Soviet 'captivity' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baade_152) - for background see the Soviet version of 'Operation Paperclip': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim

Or the Trabant actually being a very innovative car when it first appeared: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

Later on it became hard to separate facts from propaganda. Apparently the MKF-6 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKF-6_(multispectral_camera)) was innovative, but according to GDR propaganda it was of course superior to anything else in the world ;)

The East German chip manufacturing industry also was actually quite impressive for its time, even though it was 5..10 years behind the state of the art, but at least there was a domestic chip manufacturing industry.

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