The history of the Ludwig Spitz & Co company

Ludwig Spitz (born in Vienna) worked as a salesman / representative for the German manufacturers Arthur Burghardt and "Saxonia" Schumann & Co, both in Glashütte Sachsen, before he started his own company in 1907, in Berlin Thempelhof.
He made further implementations of the Burghardt Stepped drum machines.

Like other step-drum machines, he started together with his designer Mr. Robert Rein, with wooden cases. In spite of being bulky and expensive, this machine achieved commercial success thanks to Ludwig Spitz's selling abilities. The first production models named TIM (Time is Money) had input sliders. They had the idea to release machines as well with double carriage (separate result register) and called them TIM Unitas. After that, the sliders were replaced by a full keyboard.
One of the key engineers Mr. Richard Berk left the company in 1920, to set up a new Calculator factory in Sömmerda near Erfurt, as a divisionof the Dusseldorf company Rheinmetall .

In 1925 it was written by Mr. Martin (In his Calculator handbook) that the Unitas has to be seen as the top of the industry performances / achievements at that time.

Currently the TIM machines are loved by calculator collectors, due the robust design and their easy operation.