A room at Germaneum
More about – Inventions!
Coffee filters, thermos flasks, MP3 – and whom to thank for them.
Stories of inventions that came from Germany and changed the world – usually without their inventors living to see it.
The common thread
Inventing is one thing. Living to see it is another.
The stories in this room follow a pattern: Germany invents, the world makes something of it. Follow the line and you’ll see the inventors’ luck tip over – and now and then tip back.
Filled dot: they lived to see their success. Empty dot: the world was faster.
1713
Adam Friedrich Zürner · Saxony
The Pastor Who Measured Saxony by the Hour
A village pastor crawls across the country in a carriage with a counter. His columns still stand by the roadside – and his principle lives on in every satnav.
1817
Karl Drais · Mannheim
The Volcano That (Maybe) Invented the Bicycle
A volcano in Indonesia, snow in July, starving horses – and a baron from Baden who puts two wheels in a line.
1861
Philipp Reis · Frankfurt
The Horse Does Not Eat Cucumber Salad
The first sentence ever sent through a telephone was about a horse and a salad. Fifteen years before Bell.
1888
Bertha Benz · Mannheim–Pforzheim
The Woman Who Took Her Husband’s Car
A hundred kilometres, no petrol stations, one hatpin and one garter – and the automobile is saved.
Common thread: Drais’s horses went hungry, Reis’s horse wouldn’t eat cucumber salad – Bertha Benz doesn’t need one at all.
1903
Reinhold Burger · Berlin
How Does the Thermos Know?
Invented for minus 194 degrees, it worked its way up to coffee – and became so successful that its name now belongs to everyone.
1908
Melitta Bentz · Dresden
The Raided Notebook
A schoolboy’s blotting paper goes missing. The culprit is in the kitchen with a pot full of holes – inventing filter coffee.
1928
Fritz Pfleumer · Dresden
The Gold Band on the Cigarette
It was supposed to be about gold lacquer on cigarettes. What came out was the world’s memory – from tape to the cloud.
Common thread: twenty years after the coffee filter, Dresden’s second great invention.
1987
Karlheinz Brandenburg · Erlangen
Doo Doo Doo Doo – The Breakfast Song That Shrank the Music World
An engineer listens to one song thousands of times – not out of love, but because it shows up his algorithm.
Common thread: Melitta Bentz filtered the grounds out of the cup; Karlheinz Brandenburg filters out of music what the ear would miss anyway.
Room being set up
The doors open soon
All eight stories are written and are now being shaped for talks, podcast and book. Until then, make yourself a coffee – filtered, naturally.