hexagon ab industry surveying & engineering geographic information systems gis high precision measurement instruments founded heerbrugg switzerland 1921 headquarters heerbrugg canton st. gallen switzerland number of employees 3 500 1 website www.leica geosystems.com total station used in surveying leica geosystems formerly known as wild heerbrugg or just wild based in eastern switzerland produces products and systems for surveying and geographical measurement geomatics . its products employ a variety of technologies including gps satellite navigation and laser rangefinders to enable users to model existing structures terrains in computer based systems to high accuracies often under 1 cm . the brand leica better known for its high quality 2 cameras was formed on 2 april 1990 after the merger of several companies . in 2005 the company was acquired by hexagon ab . leica was listed on the swiss stock exchange until the 7 august 2006 which saw the cancellation of all publicly held registered shares in leica geosystems holdings ltd and delisting of all listed registered shares of a par value of chf 50 . 3 leica geosystems geospatial imaging is a strategic member in the open geospatial consortium since 2008 . strategic membership is the highest level of membership in the ogc . strategic members provide significant resources to support ogc objectives in the form of funding for program initiatives and staff resources inserted into the ogc process . 4 history edit heinrich wild 1877 1951 of glarus switzerland a leading designer of geodetic and astronomical instruments began his career as an apprentice surveyor . in 1908 having invented a military rangefinder and convinced zeiss to manufacture it wild moved to the city of jena and became head of the new zeiss branch responsible for surveying instruments geo . wild returned to switzerland after the first world war . 5 in april 1921 with colonel jacob schmidheiny of balgach and geologist dr. robert helbling of flums and with the help of swiss financiers he founded the heinrich wild werkst tte f r feinmechanik und optik in heerbrugg in the alpine rhine valley . in the early 1930s having recognized that he was not cut out to be a factory manager wild moved to zurich severed his connections with the firm in heerbrugg and designed instruments for kern & co in aarau . his old firm became wild heerbrugg in 1937 . it merged with the optical firm of ernst leitz of wetzlar in 1987 acquired a majority interest in kern in 1988 was renamed wild leitz ag in 1989 and became part of the leica holding company in 1990 . starting in 1996 the company was divided gradually into smaller units . thus in 1996 leica camera ag was founded followed in october 1997 by leica geosystems ag and on april 1 1998 by leica microsystems ag . the swedish company hexagon ab purchased leica geosystems in late 2005 . 6 today these three companies are all independent public companies . leica geosystems produces in continuation of wild heerbrugg the geodetic instruments and is the global market leader in this section . the main customers of leica geosystems are surveyors manufacturers and gis companies . in 2000 leica geosystems purchased cyra technologies maker of the cyrax laser 3d scanner line . in april 2001 leica geosystems acquired erdas inc and lh systems . erdas is a remote sensing software firm while lh systems was a photogrammetric software firm . these two companies were merged into software company erdas inc. 7 erdas purchased acquis er mapper and ionic in 2007 . 8 9 this expanded further erdas in the remote sensing market let them enter the enterprise topological gis market and expanded their footprint in the image web serving and image enterprise market . in october 2010 intergraph was acquired by hexagon ab . as part of the hexagon acquisition hexagon moved erdas from under leica geosystems to intergraph and z i imaging sensors from under intergraph to leica geosystems . 10 in september 2011 leica geosystems mining announced an exclusive industry partnership with locata corporation to provide the mining industry with the world s only high precision radio positioning system that is not reliant on gps . 11 see also edit choke ring antenna a key factor in the accuracy of their gps products citation needed cyrax hds system references edit leica geosystems . our company . bilton nick 7 august 2013 . leica cameras have eye popping prices with photos to match . new york times . retrieved 21 february 2014 . cancellation of all publicly held registered shares in leica geosystems holdings ltd and delisting of all listed registered shares of a par value of chf 50 press release . leica geosystems . 2006 08 07 . leica geosystems geospatial imaging takes strategic membership in the ogc r wild heerbrugg history hexagon press release . cision wire . retrieved 2005 12 07 . leica acquires erdas lh systems ; expands its focus on the gis rs market . directionsmag.com . 2001 04 30 . leica geosystems geospatial imaging acquires ionic . directionsmag.com . 2007 06 19 . leica geosystems geospatial imaging acquires acquis ade technology but not the acquis organization . directionsmag.com . 2007 05 08 . intergraph leica geosystems mining locata . construction equipment . 2011 10 03 . v t e hexagon ab people heinrich wild subsidiaries brown & sharpe intergraph leica geosystems tesa brown & sharpe brown & sharpe wire gauge intergraph geomedia leica geosystems cyra technologies leica geosystems mining related wild heerbrugg leica camera leica microsystems retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title leica geosystems & oldid 703608913 categories manufacturing companies of switzerlandnavigation system companiesgis companiesleicahidden categories all articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from october 2012 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version in other projects wikimedia commons languages deutschespa olfran aismagyarportugu s edit links this page was last modified on 6 february 2016 at 14 50 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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