September 17, 1908] 



NATURE 



477 



Scale of Merers 



1HE GERMAN MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND 

 TECHNOLOGY. 



THE guide ' to the collections in the new German 

 Museum at Munich shows that the examples 

 of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris, 

 and of the Machinery and Inventions Museum 

 at South Kensington, have been successfully fol- 

 lowed, and even improved upon, in the Bavarian 

 capital. In the old National Museum in the Maxi- 

 milianstrasse a remarkable collection of " Meister- 

 wtiken " of science and technology has been brought 

 together in a few months, a collection which is well 

 woithy to rank with those which are the results in 

 Paris of a hundred years, and at South Kensington 

 of fiftv years, of strenuous work. 



In Germany the scheme for such a museum was 

 suggested on May 3, 1903, by Oscar von Miller. .The 

 idea was adopted with enthusiasm; and George 

 Krauss, the eminent authority on the locomotive, was 

 the first to show practical interest in the scheme by 

 presenting the sum of 5000/. A 

 site for the museum was granted 

 by the municipality of Munich, 

 and a temporary home was found 

 in the old National Museum and 

 in the Isar barracks. The aim 

 of the museum is to illustrate the 

 gradual historical development of 

 scientific research and of techno- 

 logy by means of original appar- 

 atus and machines, and by means 

 of a library of ancient and 

 modern works. On September 

 20, 1906, thirty-one competitive 

 designs for the new museum 

 were received from German ar- 

 chitects, and on October 20 the 

 first prize was awarded to Gabriel 

 von SeidI for his design for a 

 building, the cost of which was 

 estimated at 375,000/. For meet- 

 ing this cost, the city of Munich 

 voted 50,000/., the Bavarian 

 Government 100,000/., and the 

 German Imperial Government 

 100,000/. The greater part of 

 the remainder has been subscribed 

 by scientific and technical cor- 

 porations and individuals. On 

 November 13, the day of the 

 opening of the temporary 

 museum, the foundation-stone of 

 the new building was laid by the 



Prince Regent of Bavaria in the presence of the 

 (ierman Emperor, and in a few years' time the col- 

 lections will have a stately permanent home. 



In the meantime the collections are admirably dis- 

 played in the temporary museum, and a mere 

 enumeration of the classification of the contents of 

 the fifty-six rooms will suffice to show the vast field 

 covered. The classification (Fig. i) is as follows : — 

 I, geology; 2, mining; 3-6, metallurgy; 7, hydraulic 

 n'.otors; 8-9, steam engines; 10, land transport; 

 !i-i2, roads; 13-14, motors; 15, astronomy; 16, 

 geodesy; 17, mathematics; 18, mechanics; 19-20, 

 optics; 21, heat; 22-23, acoustics; 24-26, electricity; 

 27 telegraphy; 28, telephony; 2g, drawing and 

 painting; 30, writing and printing; 31, photography; 

 32 horology; 33-35, textile industries; 36-37, agri- 

 culture ; 38, dairy work ; 39, brewing and distilling ; 

 40-45, chemistry; 46, hydraulic engineering; 47, 



1 "Deutscbes Museum von Meistervverken der Naturwissensch-ift und 

 TecHnik." Fiihrer durch die Sammluncen. Pp. 158 ; with 55 illustrations. 

 (Leipzig : B. G. Teubner, 190S.) Price is. 



inland navigation; 48, canals; 49-51, naval architec- 

 ture ; 53-55, library and plan collection ; and 56, court 

 of honour. 



It is impossible in the space available even to 

 enumerate the many objects of interest shown. 

 Walking through the rooms in the order indicated, 

 one notices the first geological map of Bavaria by 

 Michel in 1768, Siemens 's first electric mine loco- 

 motive (18S1), a model showing the Ilgner system of 

 electric winding in shafts (Fig. 2) ; a huge model, on 

 a scale of one-twelfth the natural size, of Krupp's 

 steelworks, with the 50-ton steam hammer, and near 

 it an original village smithy of the nineteenth century, 

 and the first cast-steel bell made by Jacob Mayer in 

 1854. .Among the hydraulic motors there are an old 

 Roumanian water-wheel, such as that described by 

 Leonardo da Vinci, the prototype of the modern 

 turbine ; the first Fourneyron turbine ; and the 

 Reichenbach hydraulic engine, built in 1817, and used 

 until 1904 for pumping brine from Berchtesgaden. 



CnouMD Floob. 



Ground Floor 



3^ 1 33 1 32 j 31 



EtgJ. 



Plan of we German Museum. 



Among the steam engines one notices a model of the 

 oldest German steam engine built for mine-drainage 

 at Eisleben in 1813; the original water-tube boiler 

 made by Alban in 1859; the original forms of Parsons' 

 and De Laval's steam-turbines ; and the first German 

 pot table engine built by Wolf in 1862. In Room 10 

 the development of land transport is shown. There 

 are reproductions of the first bicycle and of the first 

 motor-car, and an exact copy of Hedley's locomotive, 

 "Puffing Billy," at South Kensington; a modern 

 Bavarian express locomotive cut to show the internal 

 construction, and, suspended above it, Lilienthal's 

 flying machine. 



On the first floor the physics division begins. A 

 remarkable series of original instruments and models 

 illustrates the development of astronomical work, and 

 in succeeding rooms there are the original apparatus 

 or Fraunhofer, Helmholtz, Kirchhoff and Bunsen, 

 Ohm, .\mpere and Rontgen, the originals of the first 

 electric telegraph of Sommerring (1809) and Reis's 

 first telephone (1S63), side by side with reproductions 



NO. 2029, VOL. 78] 



