Stopped technologies of the past

Anyone who closes their eyes to the past becomes blind to the present.

said Richard von Weizsäcker, on the basis of a quotation attributed to George Orwell. That is exactly what representatives of a group of people we recently got to know are doing. They shed light on technologies of the past in order to understand the present and derive ideas for future technologies from it.

With great attention to detail, a review of a documentary nature was created. This film is one of a series of publications that each deal with special topics. We find the technological retrospective very interesting, which is why we decided to turn it into a video article. Since the group works worldwide, we can offer a German and an English version.

Selection of topics

Using historical film footage, many thematic pieces of the puzzle were created, offering an exciting overall insight into technologies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

• What halted scientific and technical progress? Or who?
• What do we know about the first world’s fairs?
• Tram “miracles” of the 19th century
• Lifts that are more than 100 years old
• Why were we made to switch to motorised traffic?
• An excursion into science, or: what is known about Albert Einstein?
• What will our future look like when advanced technologies enter everyday life?

Excerpt from the kaleidoscope of facts

Let the producers of the video reveal the secret of the rapid progress humanity could have made at the beginning of the 20th century. Let us hear who held back progress back then and how we might avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.