The technical museum in Vienna holds many artefacts of significance to the industrial history of Europe. It was formally established in 1908, with Dr Ludwig Erhard as its director, as part of the jubilee celebrations of the Emperor Franz Josef, but it was not opened until 1918.
The museum has an original model of a Watt engine of 1795, with several nineteenth-century steam engines, including one of 1856 made by Vincenz Prick of Vienna. There is a particularly important collection of early electricity-generating equipment, including a Wechselstrom generator by Ganz & Co of Budapest, made in 1895. A steam engine by J. & A. Blyth of London was supplied in 1853 for the river steamer Victoria, constructed by Robert Napier of Glasgow for use on the River Danube. There are important collections of machine tools and sewing machines, and of early bicycles and motor cars made in Styria and Vienna. The building department includes models of early Garden City style developments, and there is also a model of the first type of multi-chamber kiln for firing ceramics devised by Friedrich Hoffman (1818-1900) in 1858. The railway collection includes Ajax, an 0-4-2 built by Jones, Turner & Evans of Warrington in 1841, Steinbruck, an outside-cylinder 4-4-0 of 1848, examples of the innovative steam locomotives built by the Austrian Karl Golsdorf (1861-1916), and some early main line electric locomotives.
Technical Museum
212 Mariahilfer Strasse
1140 Vienna
Austria
+43 (0) 1 - 899986000
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