In 1924 Wilhelm Wagenfeld first presented a table lamp, then called MT8. At the time it was not made in large numbers, and no dealer wanted to sell it. Since 1980 the firm Tecnolumen in Bremen has made it, as the only manufacturer authorized by Wagenfeld and his family.
The lamp even made it into the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is also one of the most often counterfeited design objects of all.
In 1954 Leica brought out the M3. It was the first camera of the M series and the first Leica with a bayonet mount for the lens. Leica still builds M cameras with this mount. According to the technology site Notebookcheck, even 70-year-old Leica lenses can be used without restrictions on modern M cameras.
A German window usually opens in two ways with one handle. In one position the window tilts open at the top. In the other it swings open like a door. A gear turns the movement of the handle into the straight movement of rods.
A lock prevents a wrong move, the Fehlbedienungssperre. It stops the handle from going straight from the tilt position to the turn position. Tilt-and-turn fittings are still the most common choice in German housing and commercial building.
In 1990 Junghans brought the Mega 1 onto the market, the world’s first radio-controlled wristwatch. It receives the time from the DCF77 transmitter in Mainflingen, which is tied to the caesium clock of the national metrology institute in Braunschweig.
A Junghans brochure of 1990 promised for its MEGA radio-controlled clocks: Kein Nach- oder Umstellen der Uhr erforderlich. No resetting of the clock is needed. They even change to summer time and back by themselves.
In 1937 the Müller engineering firm in Schwelm developed a fuel can to a design by its chief engineer, Vinzenz Grünvogel. Its three handles let one person or two people carry it easily. When it was filled correctly, a pocket of air let it float if it fell into water.
The name comes from Jerry, Allied slang for the Germans.
Miele’s TwinDos system doses the detergent by itself, according to the hardness of the water, the size of the load and the type of soiling. A sensor shows on the display when the detergent container is empty.
Miele cites a study by the Öko-Institut, completed in 2013, on the savings from automatic dosing. The institute’s project dealt with dosing errors that come from consumer behavior.
The Lamy safari has been made since 1980. Its grip section is not round. It is shaped for the three-finger grip used in writing. Bernt Spiegel of the Entwicklungsgruppe Mannheim, one of its designers, also designed the Lamy abc for children who are learning to write. Lamy says its grip promotes a healthy pen posture.
STABILO sells its EASYoriginal pens with grip zones and shapes matched to the child’s age, developed together with scientists. There are versions for left-handers and for right-handers.
The Thermomix from Vorwerk weighs the ingredients itself, from 5 grams to 3 kilograms in steps of 5 grams. The TM5 of 2014 was the first Thermomix with a touchscreen. Its guided cooking function leads the cook Schritt für Schritt, step by step, through the recipe, mit Gelinggarantie, with a guarantee of success.
Vorwerk now offers more than 100,000 such recipes in more than 20 languages. In 2024 its Thermomix business had sales of 1.7 billion euros.
Since 2008, drivers on the German Autobahn have passed large posters from the campaign Runter vom Gas!, Take your foot off the gas! The Federal Ministry of Transport and the German Road Safety Council run it together. The first posters showed fictional death notices, with a photo and lines such as Fuhren gerne sportlich, liked to drive sportily, and Zu schnell in die Kurve, too fast into the bend.
In early 2009, the ministry and the council presented three new motifs. They showed car wrecks with the stickers “Baby an Bord” and “Abi 2008”, the school-leaving year, and a crashed motorcycle with a “Just Married!” balloon still tied to it. Tiefensee said: Die Plakate zeigen eindrucksvoll, wozu Raserei und mangelnde Rücksicht im Verkehr führen. The posters show powerfully what speeding and a lack of consideration in traffic lead to.
Today the posters stand at more than 700 sites along the motorways and at rest stops, and the motifs change every year.
Before their first day of school, German children get a Schulranzen, a school satchel. The standard DIN 58124 requires that 10 percent of the visible surface of a satchel be retroreflective and 20 percent fluorescent.
The German Social Accident Insurance explains the reason: drivers often see people in dark clothing only at less than 25 meters. Stiftung Warentest adds: “Die Schulranzennorm ist allerdings kein Gesetz.” The satchel standard is not a law.