Movemed: A foray into sports medicine
Movemed: A foray into sports medicine
In the mid 1980s, WINTERSTEIGER attempted to add another string to the company bow to go with the existing two divisions of Seedmech and Sports. With the Division Movemed, the company wanted to drive forward the development of exercise equipment for patients undergoing physiotherapy and physical rehabilitation. Medical devices for therapy and training were still completely unknown in Europe at this time.
Together with Dr. Wiesauer from the Institute of Sports Medicine at the University of Vienna and Wolfgang Billinger, now director of the mechanical engineering college HTBLA Ried, Johann Hattinger built the knee dynamometer and 4-extremities trainer. There was such a great sense of achievement from this that a sports therapist was hired to bridge the gap between WINTERSTEIGER and the medical field, and skiing stars came to Ried to try out the devices.
"No muscle wastage in space".
So read the headlines for the innovative exercise equipment from Ried. The Motimatic "muscle maker" was to go into space with the astronauts and exercise their muscles. But alas it never came to be: the Division Movemed had to be closed after just four years, the hydraulic devices were unsuitable in practice, and the time was not yet right for these scientifically sophisticated devices.
But the third division was not long in coming: in 1990, WINTERSTEIGER turned its focus to special machines and formed the Engineering department, which we now know today as Division WOODTECH.
