Telemax

Telemax was founded by Ken Wright, Richard Brown and Derek Pearmund. Ken met with Bill Maxson. an ex-navy test pilot and CEO of Maxson Electronics, a company which made “air to ground” missiles and wanted to diversify. Maxson gave us a budget of US$ one million and Sperry Univac, the largest Computor company after IBM, promised all the technical help we needed provided we bought their mainframes and hardware. We started the company in 1964 and Pearmund as Vice President, Western States with a new “service” office, again on Wilshire Blvd.

The airline, travel and hotel industries were all interested in “reservation systems” and the larger companies, such as American Airlines, United Airlines, Hilton and Sheraton Hotels were already starting their own in-house systems. The Telemax concept was that Hotels etc. would place a percentage of their availability into our system and sister hotels, travel agents etc. could book on-line, deducting from the Telemax inventory with a confirmation sent back to the agent. Should a room not be available a search would be made and a suitable alternate be offered. The primary problem was to make hotels etc. place a sufficient inventory with us to sell. If Telemax didn’t have the required availability the agent would contact the hotel direct.

Despite the difficulties, things went well. Within 2 years Telemax had 1500 terminals linked in, operating in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Bahamas.

The Telemax is a telecommunication tower built from 1988 to 1992 in Hanover. The tower was designed by Hans U. Boeckler and is 272 metres (892 feet) high. The tower stands on a 10 metre high base building, which brings its overall height to 282 metres (925 feet). Owner and operator of the site is Deutsche Funkturm (DFMG), a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

There is no observation deck on the Telemax. The building is of architectural interest due to its square surfaces. In 1997, Boeckler received cement-steel prize Die Kunst des Bewehrens for the tower's truss structure.

Originally a substantially slimmer round tower was planned. However, when the plans were submitted for approval, the inscription Model Hamburg was allegedly still written on the plan. It was decided that only a Model Hanover was appropriate for the state capital and thus the planning of the telecommunication tower had to begin again.

The Telemax is in city's Buchholz-Kleefeld district, which is about 8 km (5 mi) from the city center. It can be seen from all over this part of the city, and is an obvious landmark. It can be seen from the highway from about 20 km (12.5 mi) away, from the A 2 near Lehrte, for example. The name of the previous radio tower in the city was changed to VW-Tower after this new tower went into service. The tower is illuminated in magenta, the corporate color of Deutsche Telekom AG, for special occasions, such as the Hannover Messe or CeBit.

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Wikipedia