The special object
Science for the senses
The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering possesses valuable objects that testify to the development of the field. Every year new, advanced high-tech creations are added. Here we present selected examples.
The "older pumping station" by model builder Johann Gottlieb Rehme (1789-1843) leads to the beginnings of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and thus TU Dresden. It was founded in 1833 and bears witness to the beginning of teaching and research at the Technical Education Institute in Dresden, founded five years earlier. The "Eleven" (French élève for pupils), as the university students were once called, were able to use this model made of cedar wood, brass and iron to understand various forms of motion transformation and the function of machines. In the early days of industrialisation, there was a growing need for specialists to counter the English dominance in mechanical engineering with their own solutions.
The "older pumping station" is one of the oldest and most attractive exhibits in the collection of mechanical engineering gear models. It contains over 400 demonstration and exhibition items - including the electrically operated "Zappelschränke" from the 1960s in the Zeuner-Bau building, which is on the Saxon List of Monuments. The building up of the collection is closely linked to Professor Johann Andreas Schubert (1808-1870), founder of scientific mechanical engineering in Dresden and an important Saxon engineer of the 19th century.
It is a miracle that nine of the gear models that Schubert commissioned for his teaching from 1829 have been preserved: They survived the incendiary bomb that fell into the building during the night of 13th to 14th February 1945 in an intact lecture hall of the Zeuner-Bau building. And this was only the case because the pedell (assistant) did not clear away the valuable pieces after an excessive lecture.