History

Hugo Benzing was a tinkerer, both passionate and convinced of his work. As an engineer, he started designing fasteners for the many mechanical, and quickly also electrified, technologies that would revolutionise everyday life and the economy alike as long as a quarter of a century before the company that would one day bear his name was founded. Living and working in Cleveland, Ohio, in the early 20th century, he invented, among other things, the lever mechanism that prints the individual letters onto paper in a typewriter.

Even then, he already had an idea of the decisive role that connecting and fastening elements would play in the world of technology one day. He was not alone in this. His close friend and business partner A. A. Newman had opened a shop for portable watches equipped with movements from Württembergische Uhrenfabrik Bürk in Schwenningen in 1902.

After returning to Germany, he put his entire focus on this area, founding Hugo Benzing company in 1933. The first factory, situated in Dresden, offered him the best environment for his passion for tinkering. A profile grinding machine that allowed production of eccentric shapes, such as the original DIN 6799 Benzing retaining ring for the first time, dates to this period. It was the first of more than 270 patents and industrial property rights granted to Benzing company in the decades to come.