The Technoseum (former name State Museum of Technology and Work, German: ''Landesmuseum für Technik und Arbeit'') is a technology museum in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, with displays covering the industrialisation of the south-western regions of the country. The museum building was designed by the Berlin architect

Ingeborg Kühler Ingeborg Kühler (born 25 May 1943, in Dachau, Bavaria) is a German architect, engineer and university lecturer. She was the first female design professor at a West German architecture faculty and designed the plans for the Technoseum in Mannheim ...

. Its planning and construction period lasted from 1982 to 1990.

Permanent exhibitions

Visitors who walk through the building from top to bottom will experience a journey in time from the beginning of the industrial revolution in the state of Baden-Württemberg to the present day. Stands portraying the technical, social and political changes since the 18th century include those on clocks, paper manufacture and weaving. There are displays of living and working premises as well as machinery from the fields of industry, transport and the office. These displays enable the visitor to gain a graphic understanding of the far-reaching changes in living and working conditions right up to the present. The ''Elementa'' workshop complements the themes and exhibits of technological, economic and social history shown to date. It is not limited to covering basic scientific principles, but also shows the technical inventions which resulted from various scientific experiments. Opel-Sander RAK1

The Technoseum has a replica of the world's first dedicated rocket-plane on display: Fritz von Opel on September 30, 1929 was the pilot of the world's first public manned rocket-powered flight with the

Opel RAK.1 The Opel RAK.1 (also known as the Opel RAK.3) was the world's first purpose-built rocket-powered aircraft. It was designed and built by Julius Hatry under commission from Fritz von Opel, who flew it on September 30, 1929 in front of a large crowd ...

, designed by Julius Hatry. The Opel-RAK program under the leadership of Fritz von Opel and Max Valier is generally considered the world's first large-scale rocket program with a strong and long-lasting impact on later space pioneers and in particular on Wernher von Braun.https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0904rocket/ article by Walter J. Boyne in Air Force Magazine, September 1, 2004

Steam train

Running from end-to-end through the middle of the museum is a dual-gauge

metre gauge Metre-gauge railways are narrow-gauge railways with track gauge of or 1 metre. The metre gauge is used in around of tracks around the world. It was used by European colonial powers, such as the French, British and German Empires. In Europe, la ...

and

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

railway track. On this track a fireless locomotive operates steam-haul trips outside of the museum, over a bridge and then back into the museum again.

Feldbahn railway

Since 2006, between May and October each year a ' narrow gauge trains runs in a loop around the Technoseum park grounds. The track gauge is and there are two regular small diesel locomotives. One locomotive was built in 1961 and worked mining peat in Schleswig-Holstein; the other one was built in 1964 and matches a locomotive used at the nearby

Tonwaren-Industrie Wiesloch (TIW AG, originally , abbreviated ) was a brickworks making which existed in Wiesloch, Germany between 1895 and 1989. It was one of the largest and most significant factories in Germany. The factory was located just north of Wiesloch-Walldorf st ...

brickworks.

Special exhibitions

The selection of visiting or temporary exhibitions have included: * Body World (

Körperwelten ''Body Worlds'' (German title: ''Körperwelten'') is a traveling exposition of dissected human bodies, animals, and other anatomical structures of the body that have been preserved through the process of plastination. Gunther von Hagens develope ...

) (the first to appear in Europe in 1997/98) *

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

: Technology and Fiction (1999/2000) * Mythos Turn of the Century: human beings, nature and machines in photos 1800 – 1900 – 2000 (2000/01) * The Brain and Thinking: the cosmos in the head (2001/02) * All the Time in the World (2002/03) * Dance and the Banana: Trade and cultural objects (2003/04) * E-Guitar: Electric guitars, musicians, history, culture (2004) * Love of Cars (2004/05) * Understanding

Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

(2005/06) * View into the Invisible:

sub-atomic particle In physical sciences, a subatomic particle is a particle that composes an atom. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be either a composite particle, which is composed of other particles (for example, a prot ...

s, microsystems and parasites (2006/07) * Space Adventure:Break out into the universe (2006/07) * Mannheim on Wheels. Mobility from 1607 to 2007 (2007/08) * Power music (2008)

References

External links