As I had said before, there is no defined area or field which I may take up in my blog – it is always just something which motivates me to follow – thinking.

So I wanted to point to some inventions and discoveries which are nowadays known and used all over the world, but not many people know that they were originally invented or discovered first by Germans.

I was thinking of the cars we drive, including with Diesel engines, or of the x-ray machines which are used in medical care to look int the inside of our bodies; then there is Marxism, and often Aspirin is the first medicine used for slight health problems in many countries, and we use de-caffeinated coffee.

While researching a bit more, I was surprised to find many more examples: the first porcelain in Europe, and polyethylene now the most common plastic; the microphone and the tape recorder; but also the sticky tape and the hole puncher used in most offices. And the first sex shop.

But I discovered more areas: the first first Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender rights organization in history was created in Germany, and idea of the Paralympic Games was added to the Olympic games; the first public health insurance, accident insurance, and retirement insurance systems were introduced by a German government,

I ended up with much more information than I had expected. Though it meant also to have much work to do to realize my original plan, I tries to complete it by producing a large list, organized according to years, and always stating the name of the first actor. I added only two names to this endless list of male names, two women, who took important first steps: Bertha Benz in 1888 and Christine Hardt in 1899.

You can find more than 50 items in the list down here, which contains only a small selection of the more than 300 items found on the Internet.

Can I be proud as a German because Germans made so many contributions to the working world? No, that is not easy, because the list does not mention some other fundamentally important facts.

“Arbeit macht frei (Work sets one free)” was written above the entrance to several concentration camps which were organized during the time of the Nazi government, killing about 6 million people because they were Jews, while it is estimated that the German initiated Second World War killed probably 30 million people.

This has to be weighed together with the many other German contributions.

But still, if you are interested, you can have a look at this list of German inventions and discoveries:

1440 Printing press with movable types by Johannes Gutenberg – with Gutenberg’s inventions, there started the publication of many books and later of news and other information
1450 Seeing the sun as the center in our immediate cosmic environment by Nicolaus Copernicus
1505 The world’s first pocket watch by Peter Henlein
1609 Kepler’s laws of planetary motion by Johannes Kepler
1708 The first European porcelain by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus
1724 Temperature scale Fahrenheit by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
1810 Gymnastics: horizontal and parallel bars and rings by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn
1817 The first bicycle by Baron Karl von Drais
1828 Isolation of nicotine by Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt and Karl Ludwig Reimann
1830 Kindergarten concept by Friedrich Froebel
1834 First practical electric motor by Moritz von Jacobi
1835 Cell division discovered by Hugo von Mohl
1835 Modern on the back silvered-glass mirror by Justus von Liebig
1840 First medical report on polio by Jakob Heine
1850… Marxism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
1852 Credit union by Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzschand Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen
1861 Telephone transmitter by Johann Philipp Reis who coined the term “telephone”
1864 Synthesis of sleeping drug barbiturate by Adolf von Bayer
1870 Refrigerator by Carl von Linde
1877 Microphone by Emile Berliner
1880 World’s first electric elevator by Werner von Siemens
1880… The German empire became the first welfare state under Otto von Bismarck
1881 First modern cesarean operation performed by Ferdinand Adolf Kehrer
1882 Discovery of the bacterium tuberculosis by Robert Koch
1883 Health insurance (Krankenversicherung)
1884 Accident insurance (Unfallversicherung)
1885 First automobile by Karl Benz
1886 Paper hole puncher by Friedrich Soennecken
1887 Gramophone record by Emile Berliner
1888 Flocken Elektrowagen, regarded by some as the first real electric car
1889 Pension insurance (Rentenversicherung)
1894 First motorcycle by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach
1888 First long distance automotive road trip by Bertha Benz
1893 Diesel fuel and engine by Rudolf Diesel
1895 Discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen
1897 Aspirin by Felix Hoffmann
1897 First Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender rights organization founded by Magnus Hirschfeld
1898 Polyethylene the most common plastic by Hans von Pechmann
1899 Patent registration for a bra to free women from the tight usual corsets by Christine Hardt
1901 Sticky adhesive tape by company Beiersdorf
1902 Teddy Bear by Richard Steiff
1903 First de-caffeination process by Ludwig Roselius
1905 Permanent Waves suitable for people by Karl Nessler
1906 Discovery of Alzheimer’s disease by Alois Alzheimer
1907 Modern zoo bringing animals from Africa to Hamburg by Carl Hagenbeck
1908 Paper coffee filter by Melitta Bentz
1909 First intrauterine device (IUD) by Richard Richter
1918 First sub-machine gun (MP 18) by Theodor Bergmann
1928 First reliable pregnancy test by Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek
1928 Magnetic tape in Dresden, later developed and commercialized by AEG
1930 Tape recorder by BASF and AEG
1933 Electron microscope constructed by Ernst Ruska
1934 First public television station in the world by Paul Nipkow
1936 The first successful helicopter (Fw 61) by Focke-Achgelis
1936 Nerve gas tabun, developed as pesticide, but used in war by Gerhard Schrader
1938 Discovery of nuclear fission for nuclear energy by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann
1939 First jet-powered aircraft (He 178) by Hans von Ohain
1941 First programmable automatic digital computer (Z3) by Konrad Zuse
1944 First operational cruise missile (V-1 flying bomb) by Robert Lusser
1944 First long-range guided ballistic missile (V-2 rocket) created under Wernher von Braun
1948 Paralympic Games by Ludwig Guttmann
1951 Safety airbag by Walter Linderer
1960 Smart card by Juergen Dethloff and Helmut Groettrup
1961 PAL color encoding system for television by Walter Bruch
1962 The world’s first sex shop by Beate Uhse
1969 Glue stick by Henkel
1984 Short Message Service (SMS) by Friedhelm Hillebrand
1991 SIM card by Giesecke and Devrient

And more than 300 items can be see on the Internet at the “List of German inventions and discoveries”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_inventions_and_discoveries