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

Kosmos kits

Self-experimentation in the form of student experiments in the natural sciences took on increased importance around 1900. Especially over the course of the work school movement ["Arbeitschulbewegung"], the bid for the self-governed student experiment was supported with renewed vigor. The work school, which placed special value on the independence of the children, encouraged students to build their own devices and experimental equipment for use in class (Retter 1979, 170-182). Instead of using purchased equipment to demonstrate natural phenomena, the students where meant to develop an appreciation for the basics of natural science through their own handicrafts. Craft instruction ["Handarbeitsunterricht"] had taken on a greater importance as a subject in elementary schools since the turn of the century although its integration into the curricula of secondary schools was criticized as one-sided and exaggerated emphasis on manual work. The work school ideology responded with the claim that manual crafts were very important to general cognitive processes: they were neither to be understood as opposed to intellectual work nor as primary forms of expression, but as tools to aid in discovery which, in this light, possessed educational value as "self-instruction" (Pabst 1910/1911, 164; Hermann 1930, 95).

This principle of constructing the devices by oneself served as the basic design principle for the Kosmos kits built by the Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, In 1903, the owners of the Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, Euchar Nehmann and Walter Keller, founded the society "Gesellschaft für Naturfreunde" in an effort to bring laymen interested in education and nature closer together and to provide them with valuable information about nature and the natural sciences. By 1904, they had established "Kosmos. Handweiser für Naturfreunde," a monthly journal for the society in which also experiments were presented and discussed.

In the 1920's the first experiment kits were produced in the company's teaching aid department under the direction of the Swiss teacher Dr. Wilhelm Fröhlich (1892-1969). Fröhlich, who had studied physics and chemistry in Geneva and Bern, became a permanent employee of the Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung in 1920. Between 1921 and 1930, the firm developed the Kosmos-Baukästen Electro (1921), Optics (1923), Mechanics (around 1924/1925), Chemistry (around 1927) and Radio (1930). Later, the company went on to produce experiment kits for other subjects such as, for example, astronomy (around 1928), geometry (around 1928), agriculture (1936), microscopy (1936), biology (around 1935) and engineering (around 1937).

Fig. 6 and 7.: Kosmos experiment kits Electro (n.d.) and Chemistry (1930). The kit electro is courtesy of the Deutsches Museum, Munich. The kit chemistry is courtesy of the Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co. KG, Stuttgart.