The major German inventor Dr. Rudolf Hell is celebrating his 100th birthday today. To commemorate this great event, the City of Kiel and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) are honoring Dr. Hell at a ceremony in Kiel City Hall. Dr. Rudolf Hell is one of the greatest inventors of the modern era. Born in Bavaria, Dr. Hell has worked in both Berlin and Kiel as a scientist, engineer and entrepreneur. His technical achievements and inventions have played a major role in shaping the face of today's media world. He is the inventor of fax technology and a pioneer in the field of telecommunications. He put in place the key pillars needed for mechanizing, rationalizing and enhancing the quality of modern media technology. Dr. Hell was made a freeman of the City of Kiel in 1981. He has received numerous awards such as the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Gutenberg Prize awarded by the City of Mainz and the Werner von Siemens Ring. In May 2001, the City of Kiel named a street in his honor ·? the former Siemenswall leading to the Heidelberg plant now being known as Dr.-Hell-Strasse. Dr. Rudolf Hell founded his own company in the Babelsberg district of Berlin in 1929. In 1981 Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH was taken over by Siemens and in 1990 was merged into Linotype AG to become Linotype-Hell AG. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG took over Linotype-Hell AG in Kiel in 1996 in order to extend its core skills in the prepress sector. The Kiel plant therefore has a key role to play in Heidelberg's repositioning as a solutions provider in the print and media industry. Today, a 1500-strong workforce in Kiel produces scanners, imaging systems and software for supporting the print process. The development and production of the NexPress 2100, a digital color press launched onto the market in September 2001, has further reinforced the plant's operations.