1984 – JK & the Phöbos Sun Timer – 1984 … greetings from George Orwell

After my cousin Ingo heard that I was studying mechanical engineering in Aachen and had found a very innovative electronics engineer with Detlef Schiffer and two capable programmers with Harald Denker & Harald Paul, he came up with the idea to control and manage ​​his sun studio, the Body Sun Shop, in Cologne Gremberg, by a computer program …

 In addition to the pure computer software for the ATARI 1040 ST, an electronic control had to be produced for the JK tanning cabinets. This not only allowed the devices to be switched on and off, but also enabled reading and switching various additional functions …

After about 6 months of development, the first tests were done in the studio and the new system was introduced.
In addition to the switching functions, the system also took over the complete appointment management of customer appointments, permanent and multiple cards, maintenance intervals of the sunbeds as well as life cycles of the UV tubes.

The system was quickly on everyone’s lips in Cologne, especially since cousin Ingo was very busy to offer the system to studio – outfitters and distributors.

In the business, however, at the time of introduction, there were a large number of “semi-intellectual” figures with whom a professional business could not be built.

We developed the idea to offer the Phöbos Sun Timer System directly to the market leading manufacturer: JK directly.

It was a package including computer system “laced” & offered, as well as it was considered to connect an ATARI sales partner contract.

In addition to the hardware development costs, about 3,000 man-hours were included in the system at that time.

The presentation of the system at JK was all in all “groundbreaking” – especially since the then head of development of the company could not believe what all we could wrest with the information from the devices and what we ultimately made of it.
Control, data collection analysis, statistics – everything perfected for cousin Ingo and brought to safe use ….

At that time, our offer to JK was calculated with a 20% margin for us – after 14 days of consideration JK came back with their offer – We would have received 25, – DM per system consisting of hardware and software.

… we rejected the offer with thanks and did nothing further in the market. …

In the following years, JK launched solar devices with improved system interfaces and distributed a similar computer control system about 12 years later …

The Body Sun Shop used the system until the Shop was disassembled in 2006 without interference or maintenance hickups.

… the first time I was 12 years ahead of my time …