Bernhard Rohloff

Bernhard Felix Rohloff (1950 to 2023) was a German businessman and inventor, founder of Rohloff AG and the inventor of several innovative products. He studied machine engineering while working part time at the locomotive maker Henschel und Thyssen and afterwards worked at Mercedes-Benz on automobile driveshafts. Going into business for himself, he founded Rohloff AG, where he first invented an advanced narrow chain that became the industry standard for road bikes and was used by several Tour de France winners, together with the manufacturing methods for it, and personally designed a proprietary machine for making SLT-99 chains. The company became an original equipment chain maker for Campagnolo. In the early 1990s he began developing the Rohloff Speedhub 500/14, a 14 speed planetary gear hub that was patented and released in 1998 and is assembled by hand in Hessen, Germany. He died in 2023 of complications of Parkinson's disease.