Rudolf Goldschmidt

Rudolf Goldschmidt was born in 1876 and died in 1950, aged 74. He was an electronic engineer who took out a patent, in 1934, with Albert Einstein.

Rudolf was born in Neubukow, Germany and studied electrical engineering. He was a prolific inventor of radio technologies but also of a "vitality meter", commonly known as a pulse meter. If you own a smartwatch such as a Fitbit you can check your pulse at a glance. His machine created a continuous record of the heartbeat on a paper roll, but wasn't quite as portable as your smartwatch.

His interest in the application of electrical engineering to medical instrumentation didn't stop there: In 1928 a singer and friend of Albert Einstein suffered a loss of her hearing.

Einstein asked Goldschmidt to help him develop a hearing aid, and the German patent was issued to them in 1934. Shortly afterwards Goldschmidt and his children emigrated to England. It is not known whether there was enough room in his luggage for the hearing aid.