Chronos Richardson Legacy - More than 140 Years of History

How It Began 

In the second half of the 19th century, the first waves of industrialization began to touch Hennef, a small town near Cologne, Germany. Many new factories appeared and in this dazzling period, two men with completely different backgrounds met and created something that would forever change the weighing process: Carl Reuthers and Eduard Reisert, inventors of the very first automatic weigher.

Eduard Reisert started his career in engineering in 1866 in Augsburg and Cologne, Germany. Ten years later, in 1876, the young engineer founded the company Munnem & Reisert and at this time, the idea of using nature’s forces to execute human work fascinated him. After many thoughts and tests, “he applied the gravity that pulled on the item to be weighed as a source of power to fill and empty a weighing container shaped like a drum.” At that moment, he invented an automatic flow measurement device for loose and bulk products and manufactured his idea in 1877.

Although it was a great innovation, it was still quite far from the automatic mechanical weighing scale in regards to approval and legal acceptance for calibration. The equation was almost there, but someone’s expertise was missing: Carl Reuther.

Carl Reuther grew as a metal worker in Bonn, and then travelled in Germany, Belgium and France as a day labourer. In these years, mechanical engineering was becoming more and more popular. It was the perfect opportunity for Reuther to learn new skills and knowledge that he could bring back to Hennef, where he founded a factory that built high quality equipment for the agricultural sector.

This revolutionary system was based on center beam balance, which is still one of the most accurate technologies available. In other words, it was able to function fully automatically by using the earth’s gravity and a principle they called the “tandem beam balance.” This feature permitted a large range of settings for various product types on the scale in large hoppers or pans.

Why “Chronos”?

The two industrial pioneers named their new scale “Chronos” after the Greek word for “time.” This name emphasized the fact that for more than 10,000 years, bulk products had been weighed manually, in a time-consuming manner. But now, the Chronos company’s scale allowed weighing to be done quickly, saving a considerable amount of time and effort (and vastly increasing accuracy). 

Words from Reuther and Reisert, May 1896

“When some 20 years ago we began to build and commercialise our own invention, an automatic weighing scales for grain, etc., this endeavor might have been considered to be quite bold, because all attempts in this direction undertaken by others had failed and served only to confirm the general opinion at the time that the manufacture of a useful automatic weighing scale was completely impossible. Today however, nobody can deny that we solved the task we set ourselves with the utmost success. Our automatic scales are well known and in operation at all the relevant major industrial sites at home and abroad around the world […]. 

Since our automatic weighing scales were approved for calibration and for customs and excise purposes in Germany and almost all other countries of the globe they have comp«zxletely supplanted the old, non-automatic weighing devices at all the pertinent larger factories.” 

From Small Town Prodigies to Worldwide Recognition

For the past 141 years, and with more than 60,000 automatic scales sold worldwide, Chronos scales have proven their worth. Chronos has remained a leader in innovation and enlarged their portfolio to become a complete line supplier with the weigher standing out as an important product. In 2002, the innovation strength of Chronos Richardson caught the attention of Premier Tech and became one of the main drivers for Premier Tech’s acquisition of the company. Together, the sum of Chronos technologies and those of the Premier Tech product portfolio in America, Europe, and Asia have had more power than ever to help manufacturers reach their goals.

Today, 20 years later, the CHRONOS Net Weigh Scale from Premier Tech continues to raise industry standards with its exceptional performance, achieved by combining our history with our constant drive to innovate.

It’s hard to imagine a manufacturing plant without today’s computer-controlled automatic weighing equipment, but modern manufacturing wouldn’t exist without the mechanical expertise and drive to innovate that grew from collaboration between Reuther and Reisert. The same type of game-changing collaboration takes place around the world, every day, between Premier Tech and the manufacturers with whom it partners as a supplier.

Thanks to the considerable engagement of Mr. Wolfgang Euler, former employee of Chronos Richardson, the Chronos history has been documented in great detail with passion.