Innovation Archives - Page 2 of 12

A Matter for Professionals

On 10 March 2019 the FDP leader Christian Lindner commented on the school strikes for the climate. Children and young people, he said, could not be expected to see all the global connections, what is technically sensible and what is economically feasible. Das ist eine Sache für Profis. (That is a matter for professionals.) The organizers of Fridays for Future replied: Profis beim Thema Klimaschutz sind Wissenschaftler*innen. (The professionals on climate protection are scientists.) In March 2019, according to the initiative, more than 23,000 scientists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland signed a statement that supported the students. Volker Quaschning, a Berlin professor of renewable energy systems, said: Wir sind die Profis und sagen: Die junge Generation hat Recht. (We are the professionals, and we say: the young generation is right.)

Neither side questioned that the experts should decide. They argued only about who the experts were.

Home Office Rules Need the Works Council

Since 18 June 2021 the German Works Constitution Act has listed a new matter on which the works council has a right of co-determination: the Ausgestaltung von mobiler Arbeit, the arrangement of mobile work. Lawyers point out that whether a company offers mobile work at all remains the employer’s decision. How it works must be agreed with the works council. This covers how much mobile work is possible, when the working day starts and ends, and from which places employees may work. If the two sides cannot agree, a conciliation board decides. Its ruling replaces their agreement.

No Patent for the First Computer

On 12 May 1941 Konrad Zuse presented his Z3 in his workshop in Berlin. German Wikipedia says: Die Z3 gilt heute als erster funktionstüchtiger Computer der Welt. (The Z3 is today considered the world’s first working computer.) Its article on the machine opens more carefully and calls it one of the first working digital computers in the world. The Z3 was destroyed in an air raid on 21 December 1943. In 1941 Zuse had filed a patent application that described the machine. It was published in 1952, but other companies, among them IBM, objected. The dispute went through every court until the Federal Patent Court decided in 1967 that the inventor of the computer could not receive a patent mangels Erfindungshöhe, for lack of inventive step. Zuse himself called the English mathematician Charles Babbage den eigentlichen Vater des Computers, the real father of the computer.

Weber on the Idea and the Dilettante

In 1917 Max Weber gave a lecture in Munich called Wissenschaft als Beruf, Science as a Vocation. An idea, he said, comes when it pleases, not when we please. But normally it prepares itself only auf dem Boden ganz harter Arbeit, on the ground of very hard work. A dilettante can also have ideas of great consequence. What the dilettante lacks is die feste Sicherheit der Arbeitsmethode, the firm certainty of a working method. For this reason he is usually unable to check the idea, to assess its consequences or to carry it out.

The Civil Code of 1900, Modernized

The German Civil Code, the BGB, came into force on 1 January 1900. It is still in force. Instead of replacing it, the legislature has changed it very many times. In 1976 a reform removed the housewife marriage as the legal model. In 1998 the law on children was reformed. A major overhaul came on 1 January 2002 with the Schuldrechtsmodernisierung, the modernization of the law of obligations. Its trigger was an EU directive on consumer sales. Some experts wanted only to implement the directive. Others wanted a complete revision. The reform cut the standard limitation period from 30 years to three, and it moved several separate laws into the Code itself.

The Stress Test for Stuttgart 21

On 30 November 2010 the arbitrator Heiner Geißler announced his ruling on Stuttgart 21, the planned underground main station. One of its conditions was a Stresstest. Deutsche Bahn had to prove that the new station could handle a timetable with 30 percent more capacity in the peak hour, with good operating quality. The railway ran the test, and the Swiss firm SMA und Partner audited it. On 29 July 2011 the results were presented and discussed in public, again with Geißler as moderator. The auditors found that the required 49 arrivals in the busiest hour could be handled. Opponents argued that the railway had not kept to its own rules. One group of critics said that the station could handle only 32 to 38 trains in the peak hour.

Who May Draw Your House

In Bavaria, the plans for a house that needs a building permit must be prepared by a design author who is bauvorlageberechtigt, entitled to submit building plans. This right belongs to people who may use the protected title of architect, and to engineers on an official list. Master craftsmen in bricklaying, concrete construction and carpentry, like some graduates and state-certified technicians, have a limited right. They may submit plans for small residential buildings with no more than three apartments. A homeowner without one of these qualifications cannot submit plans he has drawn himself, however good they are. Each German state sets its own rules, and the details differ.

Something Learned Every Day

The Göttingen physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote in one of his notebooks: Man sollte sich nicht schlafen legen, ohne sagen zu können, daß man an dem Tage etwas gelernt hätte. (One should not go to sleep without being able to say that one has learned something that day.) He did not mean a new word. He meant, among other things, the Verbesserung eines Irrtums, in dem wir uns lange befunden haben, the correction of an error we have long held. This could not be done quickly before blowing out the candle. The occupations of the whole day had to aim at it.

In the same notebook stands his much-quoted line about change: Ich kann freilich nicht sagen, ob es besser werden wird wenn es anders wird; aber so viel kann ich sagen, es muß anders werden, wenn es gut werden soll. (I certainly cannot say whether it will get better if it gets different. But this much I can say: it must get different if it is to get good.)

Anyone May Object to a Patent

When the German Patent and Trade Mark Office grants a patent, the decision is not final at once. Under the Patent Act, jeder, anyone, may file an opposition within nine months after the grant is published. The opposition must be in writing and give reasons. One ground is that the invention is not patentable. Another is that the patent does not describe the invention clearly and completely enough for a skilled person to carry it out. The patent office then decides whether the patent is maintained, to what extent, or whether it is revoked.

The Day the A-Class Tipped Over

On 21 October 1997 the new Mercedes A-Class tipped over in a swerving test by a Swedish car magazine. Daimler-Benz stopped deliveries at once. It resumed them in February 1998, with electronic stability control fitted as standard, and it retrofitted the cars already sold. According to a report by the news agency dpa, fitting stability control as standard cost about 100 million marks a year. The reputation of the A-Class was damaged at first. The campaign that followed quoted the tennis player Boris Becker: Stark ist, wer keine Fehler macht. Stärker, wer aus seinen Fehlern lernt. (Strong is the one who makes no mistakes. Stronger is the one who learns from his mistakes.) Stability control later became standard in all Mercedes models.