Dresden's inventions = in almost everybody's daily life

(Source: © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)

Whether it’s a camera or a dental hygiene product: during industrialisation many things were developed and perfected in the Saxon capital. Visitors can discover the ingenuity of Dresden’s inventors in many different places.

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A beautiful motif, a special moment, captured for eternity! Various devices were developed in Dresden for that purpose. Things like the tape recorder, which goes back to the Dresden inventor Fritz Pfleumer. A few years later, in 1936, the first 35 mm SLR camera appeared in stores, it was also a product “Made in Dresden”. The Technical Collections Dresden takes you on a discovery trip to these and many other milestones. The building that houses the museum in the Striesen district is a place that itself has been a part of Dresden’s technological history. From 1898 to 1992 world famous cameras were developed and produced here by “Zeiss Ikon” und “Pentacon” in the “Ernemann-Werken”.

Cameras from Dresden were taken along on trips around the world. And how did the people travel? For example, by train, a means of transport in which Dresden also played an important role. The first German intercity railway went into operation here in 1839 between Dresden and Leipzig. A year earlier the first German steam engine was built here. You can see a copy of it, the “Saxonia”, in the Transport Museum Dresden. Steam engines still run regularly in Dresden Elbland: on the narrow-gauge tracks through Lößnitzgrund and the Weißeritztal valley. On the Weißeritztalbahn the popular Narrow Gauge Train Festival is on this year on 14 and 15 July, with events at the train stations, special trips and many historic engines and waggons.

One of the things that makes life more pleasant and consistent is hygiene. Here too, Dresden was a pioneer. Inventions by Karl August Lingner and Ottomar Heinsius von Meyenburg still seem like a breath of fresh air – to this very day. The mouthwash “Odol”, successful both nationally and internationally, was developed here by Lingner in 1892. Another strong brand was Meyenburgs toothpaste “Chlorodont”, which came on the market in 1907. If you want to know more, the place to go for everything that is connected to health and humans is the Deutsche Hygiene-Museum Dresden. A visit to the permanent exhibition shows how the concept of “hygiene” changed in the course of time from the last century to today.

In 1899, the Dresden housewife and inventor Christine Hardt brought together comfort and style. That year she registered a patent for a “bodice as a breast support”. She constructed this original form of a brassiere out of handkerchiefs and braces. The ideas of modern Dresden designers are also very imaginative: it is worth paying a visit to Dresdner Neustadt, for example to the studio of the fashion designer Dorothea Michalk.