German inventor Artur Fischer passed away on January 27 at his home in Waldachtal in the southwest. He registered more than 1,100 patents, including the first synchronous Camera flashes and anchors Germany used by millions of self-helpers to fix screws to the wall. He is 96 years old.

His company Fischer Group announced his death.

Mr. Fischer, a trained locksmith and obsessive tinker, came up with his first patented invention in 1947 when he wanted to take pictures of his newborn daughter.

He told Der Spiegel in 2015: “At the time, you could only use powder flash to take indoor photos, and you had to use a rope to ignite. This is dangerous and the picture quality is poor because the subject usually blinks under the flash.”

He came up with a synchronization mechanism that triggers the flash when the shutter is released. The device was acquired by the large camera company Agfa, and Mr. Fischer was on the way, and over the next seven years he proposed hundreds of solutions to solve difficult technical problems.

In 1958, he solved a problem faced by construction workers and home maintenance enthusiasts: how to firmly insert screws into plaster or plasterboard. He designed a nylon plug with a split tip that can be inserted into a drill hole. When the screw turns, the plug prevents it from moving the plaster. As the screw advances toward the tip, the anchor expands and presses tightly on the hole. The two anti-rotation fins on the plug are wedged into the plaster to hold the anchor in place.

This is a well-known better mousetrap, a major improvement over the hemp-filled metal anchor used at the time. Today, approximately 14 million Mr. Fisher plugs are produced worldwide every day.

"Just like Bill Gates is to a personal computer, Artur Fischer repairs the home by himself," Der Spiegel wrote in an interview.

Other inventions of Mr. Fischer include Fischertechnik model making kits, cup holders with retractable lids, ventilation nozzles and edible game modeling materials made from potato starch.

"I am interested in any problem that I can provide a solution for," Mr. Fisher told the German magazine "Technical Review" in 2007.

His total number of inventions is slightly higher than Thomas Edison, who holds 1,093 patents. In recognition of Mr. Fischer's work, the European Patent Office awarded him a lifetime achievement award in 2014.

Artur Fischer was born on December 31, 1919 in Tumlingen and is now part of Waldachtal. He is the son of a tailor. His mother ironed his collar to make ends meet. She recognized her son's mechanical ability and encouraged him everywhere, helped him set up a workbench at home, and bought him a German version of the erection suit.

Atul attended a vocational school, but left at the age of 13 to work as an apprentice with a locksmith in Stuttgart, Germany. He joined the Hitler Youth League and enlisted in the army, hoping to become a pilot, but he was short-sighted, short in stature, and had no high school diploma. He received training as a mechanic in the Luftwaffe and was assigned to a base in the Palatinate area, where Adolf Hitler unexpectedly visited on Christmas Day 1939.

"I made a model airplane as a Christmas gift for my mother," Mr. Fisher told Der Spiegel. "Then my commander said I was the best mechanic, and I should give the plane to Hitler. It was a terrible time."

Mr. Fischer survived the Battle of Stalingrad and left on the last plane. He was later captured in Italy during the war and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Britain. After returning to his hometown in 1946, he found an assistant job in an engineering company and began to manufacture lighters and loom switches from military waste. In 1948, he founded his company, Fischer Group, which now has 42 international subsidiaries, 4,000 employees worldwide, and sells 14,000 products in more than 100 countries.

In Germany, Mr. Fischer is known for his Fischertechnik kit-a set of nylon blocks with electric motors and photosensitive batteries, used by schoolchildren and hobbyists to build machines and robots, and engineers used to model prototypes. The first kits were given to customers as Christmas gifts in 1964, but they were so popular that they were sold to consumers the following year.

Many humble inventions of Mr. Fischer led to the spin-off. For example, he used the principle of wall plugs to create a series of surgical plugs to fix broken bones together.

Mr. Fischer's wife, former Rita Gonser, passed away in 2013. His son Klaus and daughter Margot Fischer-Weber survived.

One of Mr. Fischer's recent inventions is a small tool that can hold and cut off the top of eggs of any size. When a hotel owner complained to him that his guests always made a mess when they opened the boiled eggs at breakfast—it was 1946, and he started to solve the problem.