Experiment kits and instruction manuals around 1900 - continued...

At lower-level schools, cabinets were known for their poor equipment and sometimes haphazard construction and the teachers who used them for their deplorable lack of skill, even though one of the general principles regarding the use of experiments in schools as reported in an Experiment Book for Instruction in Natural Studies [Experimentierbuch für den Unterricht in der Naturlehre] written in 1898 reads as follows: "every test must succeed" (Rosenberg 1919, 47). Experiment demonstrations required sufficient practice and good preparation as well as an exact attention to the proper conditions so that they ensure that each phenomenon could be demonstrated successfully at any given time, forming the basis for empirical science in the classroom.

Fig. 1.: Haupt-Katalog (Jubiläums-Ausgabe) der Leipziger Lehrmittel-Anstalt von Dr. Oskar Schneider [publ. approx. 1902] (Detail).

Prepackaged experiment kits together with a manual addressed this problem. Such kits, tested to ensure successful use, were produced by the "Leipziger Lehrmittel-Anstalt" and the Dresden-based company "Meiser & Mertig". In acknowledgment of the reformation of the curricula and the development of school-specific cabinets and laboratories, teaching aid producers and precision mechanics workshops also began to model themselves to address these new requirements: using catalogs, e.g. Meiser & Mertig's Sammlungen physikalischer Apparate (1897) and the Haupt-Katalog der Leipziger Lehrmittel-Anstalt von Dr. Oskar Schneider (1902), and permanent and multi-regional exhibitions, they presented economical mass-produced devices as well as customized goods for use in practical instruction.