When Heinrich Heidersberger moved to Braunschweig in the early 1950s, he had long been a sought-after architectural, industrial and, not least, advertising photographer. It comes as no surprise then that he was repeatedly hired by Brunsviga Maschinenwerke AG, based in Löwenstadt, before it was absorbed by Olympiawerke AG at the end of the decade due tocapital-intensive modernizations.

The subject of the photographer’s glossy images he created for advertisements and product catalogs are mainly various Brunsviga mechanical calculator models — at times with or without shadow effects, or even in starlight. With an eye for subtledetails and the technical refinements of the devices, advertised with the slogan “brains of steel,” Heidersberger mainly composed his images by montaging several individual shots together. And appearing almost always in the image as an indicator of technical progress: the power cord. It was an unmistakable sign of superiority over the purely mechanical products of the competition. His photographs of the production process, in turn, were intended to portraythe precision, meticulousness, and concentration required to manufacture the compact technical marvels by hand.