Nowadays, information circulates around the world as a matter of course. The interconnection of digital data via computers, smartphones and the internet forms the basis of our age. Yet the fundamental inventions relating to mechanical computing and writing date back a long way.
Electronic computers in the GDR
After the Second World War, electronics heralded a new era. The first electronic computers in the GDR were developed in Dresden, Chemnitz and Jena. However, the development and production of computers in East Germany took place against a backdrop of difficult economic and political conditions. Although developments in East Germany could only keep up with the rapid international progress at a slow pace, desktop computers began to take over the workplace from the 1980s onwards and increasingly dominated leisure activities. Initially, they were bulky and heavy; later, they became portable and mobile.
Robotron – Computer Technology & Industrial Heritage
Selected items from the museum’s extensive collection, ranging from the legendary R 300 mainframe computer of 1967 to the prototype of the GDR’s first home computer, the ‘Z 9001’. The exhibition of Robotron products is accompanied by film and photographic documents depicting working life in the new industrial sector, as well as its contemporary and popular-science portrayal in film and on television. Computer pioneers from the Friends of the Dresden Technology Collections present the milestones in the development of Robotron computers in short videos and demonstrate how they worked. In a short film essay, animator Katrin Rothe explores Dresden’s computer history in search of answers to the question of the future relationship between working people and intelligent machines.
