radio technology museum Königs-Wusterhausen, part 1
Todays post deals with the transmission and radio technology museum at a former transmission facility in the town of Königs-Wusterhausen close by Berlin (the town is reachable by Berlin subway). The facility is located on a hill and rather big (Flight over the the facility including its museum (building with red tiles)). The museum is definitely a must-see.
The history of the facility and the museum is described in german on Wikipedia and on the museum website so I will recap only a bit in english.
Around 1911 an airship and telegraph military unit performed experiments with arc converters (images here) where the antennas were being lifted with balloons and kites on the site. This was so successful that the location was chosen as a military transmission facility. On September 27, 1919 though the postal authority took over and started to use it mainly for telegraphic services. On December 22, 1920, the first transmission of music and speech was there made in the longwave range. It was a Chrismas concert which got written responses from England, Skandinavia and the Netherlands but not from within Germany, since private radio reception was still forbidden in Germany. But on January 7, 1926 the german broadcast “Deutsche Welle” started to transmit its program. The facility survived WWII almost untouched. After WWII the equipment was demonted by russian forces, however in the turn a new transmission facility was build up again. In particular french forces donated the equipment of the transmitter in Tegel. March 20, 1949 radio broadcast was resumed. Until 1985 the military program “Wolga” was transmitted. After the reunification not much transmission took place and finally it terminated completely in 1995. Currently there is still the museum which is to a great extend run by volunteering pensioners. The future of the museum appears to me rather unclear that is currently the small city of Königs-Wusterhausen is still owner and seems to be the main sponsor. Moreover in Berlin it seems the focus on what to preserve and what not follows a rather non-technology, non-workculture based approach (see e.g. here or here)
Here some images:
November 8th, 2016 at 8:07 pm
What are those two warning signs in the last image? Looks as if they’re identical.
November 8th, 2016 at 8:18 pm
The signs say that only one hoist can be active.
November 9th, 2016 at 12:08 pm
But why two signs? Isn’t it possible to say in german something like: At most one hoist should be in use at each crane?
November 9th, 2016 at 12:34 pm
C. Rankin wrote:
Yes it is possible. I can also only guess why there are two warnings. The little red box underneath the signs says not only “Kran 0i” but also “Netzschalter” that is “main on/off switch”. The other words are “Diesel” and “Schaltfeld” respectively, which might refer to different areas within the room or maybe even within the building. In particular there is a giant Diesel generator in the building (but if I remember correctly it is in another room than the switches).
So those boxes seem to be some kind of emergency power on/off switches (maybe with a fuse) and I guess in a case of emergency the attention would be usually directed on the concrete switch and its immediate surroundings and not on arbitrary signs in its larger vicinity. There was apparently not enough space to write the warnings directly on the box -so thats maybe why there are two warnings – one for each power on/off box.