Masterpieces of Science and Technology

The U-1 was, above all, intended as an experimental vessel in order to perform technical tests under working conditions. In 1907 the U-1 completed a journey around Jutland convincing the German admiralty thar submarines had operational capability. In World War I she was employed as a training boat. 

Reis first reproduced single tones on a telephone. Speech could only be understood indistinctly. 

This motor by Rudolf Diesel was built in 1897 and is considered to be the first diesel engine. Tests in 1897 confirmed the diesel motor’s efficiency. Fuel consumption per HP/hour amounted to 238 g, i.e. 26.8 % of the heat contained in the fuel was converted into effective power.

Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826) began developement of the large and powerful refracting telescopes on a parallactic mounting in 1818. Fraunhofer’s refractors were unequalled both in the size and lens quality, as well as in the precision of the mechanism’s mounting.

The first electric locomotiv (1879)

In 1851, Léon Foucault used a pendulum in the Pantheon im Paris to prove the Earth’s rotation on its axis in relation of the fixed stars in the sky.

In 1886 the engineer Carl Benz (1844–1929) of Mannheim filed a patent application for a "vehicle operated by a gas engine". It was the first car with a gasoline engine.

The Z3, which was destroyed in the Second World War, was made fully functional in 1941. It is considered the world's first fully programmable and automatic computing device. The machine displayed and demonstrated here is a working replica built and authorized by Konrad Zuse himself.

Otto von Guericke is best known for his public and spectacular experiments with the Magdeburger Hemispheres which he demonstrated before astonished audiences in Magdeburg in 1656 and in Berlin in 1633. He placed 2 bowls together to form a hollow sphere and evacuated the air from the space between them. The air pressure exerted by ambient air around them was strong enough that 16-18 horses could not pull the hemispheres apart.

The demonstration of the Faraday cage is particularly impressive. A member of the museum staff sits inside a sphere consisting of a wire lattice that is hoisted to a height of 3 m (10 ft). Then a voltage of about 270 kV is applied, made visible by a discharge across a spark gap.

Kaufmann’s trumpeter automaton possesses two pegged-cylinder systems, one of which controls the melody the other the rhythm. Power is provided by winding up a spring, while the notes are generated by twelve metal reeds and two bellows. 

In the 18th century this phamarcy supplied the St. Emmera, monastery in Regensburg.