Explorers and Inventors, Intellect and Politics : Germany

Diederik Pining of Hildesheim landed in America 19 years before Columbus. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz developed the binary system of numeration in Hanover and built the world’s first functional calculating machine. Carl Friedrich Gauss of Brunswick invented the telegraph, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen of Gottingen the carbon-zinc battery, Werner von Siemens of Lenthe the generation of electricity by means of a dynamo, and Emil Berliner of Hanover the Gramophone.

Karl Jatho completed the first successful powered flight at the Vahrenwalder Heide in Hanover - three months before the Wright brothers’ attempt in the United States. Walter Bruch, also from Hanover, developed the PAL color system for color television. 1961 marked the appearance of the last volume of the “Deutsches Worterbuch”, a comprehensive dictionary of the German language begun in 1838 by the brothers Grimm at the University of Gottingen. In 1837 the brothers Grimm and five other professors - the “Gottingen Seven” - had protested against the sovereign’s decision to repeal the constitution. In 1957 the “Gottingen 18″, a group that included the Nobel Prize laureates Max Born, Otto Hahn, Werner Heisenberg and Max von Laue, warned against the dangers of nuclear rearmament.