THINK, MACHINE!

Today, informations circulate around the world as a matter of course. The networking of digital data using computers, smartphones and the internet is the basis of our age. But the fundamental inventions for machine computing and writing go back a long way. The idea of building machines that can calculate goes back to the beginnings of modern science in the 17th century. However, it was not until 200 years later, in the course of high industrialization, that it became technically possible and also economically interesting to produce calculators and typewriters in large quantities.

In the rapidly growing administrations, in large and small companies, at universities, but also in the private sector, more and more calculations and writing are carried out with machine support. Saxony and Thuringia are the most important locations in Germany for the new office machine manufacturing industry. After the Second World War, electronics marked a new era. The GDR's first electronic computers are built in Dresden, Chemnitz and Jena. However, the development and production of computers in East Germany was subject to difficult economic and political conditions. Even if development has been slow to keep pace with rapid international progress, desktop computers have been conquering the workplace since the 1980s and increasingly dominating leisure activities. Initially clunky and heavy, they later became portable and mobile. Today, chip factories, software developers and numerous research institutes continue Dresden's tradition in the field of information technology and shape the region's profile as a location for high technology.

THINK, MACHINE!

FROM SECRETARY TO STENOTYPIST

The rise of the office machine industry at the end of the 19th century was accompanied by three trends worldwide: writing and computing work became increasingly important in the bureaucracies of modern nation states, in trade and in industry. This was associated with a gigantic increase in written information. Machines not only accelerated office work, but also transformed it from a male domain into a typical occupational field for female employees. The secretary became a female secretary and the pure typist became a »stenotypist«.

AWAY WITH INK AND PEN

Starting with the wooden machines built by the Austrian carpenter Peter Mitterhofer (1822–1893) built in the 1860s, to the typewriter with a QWERTY keyboard by the Americans Christopher Latham Sholes (1819–1890) and Carlos Glidden (1834–1874), it was an arduous journey from the idea to the industrial industrial series product. The early inventors were driven by two maxims: The machines should write as if they were printed and also enable the blind and visually impaired people to do so. The heyday of mechanical and later electromechanical typewriters stretched from the 1880s for almost a century and only came to an end with the advent of computer-based writing technology.

BRAINS OF STEEL

Before the middle of the 19th century, machines for calculating in the four basic arithmetic operations were only produced as individual items and were mostly used by merchants or scientists. The demand for calculating machines only increased dramatically with the challenges of the industrialization process. In 1878, engineer Arthur Burkhardt (1857–1918) founded a calculating machine factory in the city of Glashütte, Saxony, and was the first in Germany to start industrial production. To do so, he used the knowledge of the clock industry located in the Osterzgebirge (Eastern Ore Mountains). The starting point for his calculating machines was the "Arithmomètre" patented by the French insurance entrepreneur Thomas de Colmar (1785–1870).

Before the Second World War, 75 percent of the German office machine industry was located in Saxony and Thuringia. Many production facilities in the cities of Glashütte, Dresden, Chemnitz, Leipzig, Erfurt, Sömmerda and Zella-Mehlis had a wealth of experience in the manufacture of precision mechanical mass products such as clocks, sewing machines, bicycles and weapons. In the 1950s and 1960s, most of the manufacturers and their employees made the transition to electronic data processing as "state-owned" companies.

Erika

As a handy travel typewriter, the "Erika" captured the hearts of all those who traveled a lot for business or pleasure from 1910 onwards. It was named after the granddaughter of Bruno Naumann (1844–1903), who founded Seidel & Naumann, which later became Germany's largest typewriter manufacturer, as a sewing machine factory in 1868. Erika typewriters were produced in various models and designs until 1991, the "Erika-Picht" typewriter for the blind even until 2010. With a total production volume of over eight million, "Erika" is the most widely produced typewriter in Germany and the best-known typewriter brand from Dresden.

Machina Arithmetica

The mathematician and polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) invented the first calculating machine for mechanically solving all four basic arithmetic operations. In his opinion, it was "unworthy to waste the time of outstanding people with menial arithmetic work, because even the most simple-minded person can write down the results reliably when using a machine". The only surviving original has been in the Leibniz Archive of the Lower Saxony State Library in Hanover since 1896 following its restoration in Glashütte/Sa. In 1985, the reconstruction of this machine began under the direction of the Dresden mathematician and computer pioneer Prof. Dr. N. J. Lehmann (1921–1998). After analyzing the mechanical motion sequences, Lehmann recalculated the shape of some of the components. This enabled the replica, unlike the original, to automatically transfer tens to all eight decimal places.