 Today we can look back with a certain amount of pride on a long company history; the story of a successful company which over the last few decades has grown to become one of the most capable and renowned suppliers of model goods in Germany, and indeed anywhere in the world.
The story starts in 1924, when Robert Becker (robbe) set up a small sawmill in the heart of Germany; a business which was the seed from which today’s enterprise blossomed. At that time modelling was still a largely unknown activity,
and indeed it did not fall within the scope of the new company at all at first. However, the business made a success of marketing a wide range of timber products.
In 1945 the firm began importing and processing balsa wood from South America, and it was Hubert Becker, son of the firm’s founder, who was one of the first to recognise the potential of this easy working timber for modelling - a
hobby which was just beginning to get under way at that time. The result was robbe’s first small balsa model aircraft  kits, developed and manufactured a full half-century ago. These first products were sold primarily within Germany. It
was also Hubert Becker who gave the company its current title by taking the initial letters of his father’s name Robert Becker and making them into the new word 'robbe'. In so doing he created an enduring memorial to his father. Over
the next few years Hubert Becker steadily built up the company’s position in the modelling market, which by this time was developing rapidly. From the outset one of the company’s maxims was to market products which to the
greatest possible extent had been developed and manufactured in-house, and the robbe development department has always played an important role in implementing new ideas and fostering the company’s independence.
 In the 1950’s radio-controlled (RC) modelling really took off, starting with an unprecedented boom in the United States of America, where the first small radio control systems - small by the standards of the day - were first developed.
It did not take long for modellers and modelling engineers on this side of the Atlantic to take an active part in developing these new radio control systems. Hubert Becker quickly recognised the trend, negotiated with a German radio control system manufacturer and very soon made the decision to market the Telekont system, which at that time was considered revolutionary in design. In so doing he laid the cornerstone for the next phase in the development of
the robbe company.
From this time on, the art of electronics advanced at such a rate that modellers were soon able to exploit technology which had previously been the stuff of dreams. Initially the new RC systems could only offer 'bang-bang' control,
i.e. the control surfaces 'banged' from one extreme of travel to the other, but in the 1960’s the first proportional systems came onto the market, and the modelling world was instantly won over. It seemed that every modeller was
yearning to have full control of his models. With this explosion in the popularity of RC, the start of robbe’s collaboration with the Japanese Futaba company in the early 1960’s must rank as a further milestone in the firm’s history. Today Futaba is the largest and probably the most successful manufacturer of high-quality
radio control systems in the world, and robbe’s partnership with the company formed the basis for the development and distribution of firstclass RC products for the European market
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