Rhein-Main Universitäten (RMU)

In 2014, the Physics Department established a collection of a few remaining historical instruments. These were originally stored in a kind of “wild collection” in the basement of the new institute, which few people knew about. Among these pieces are, for example, old light diffraction prisms from Goethe's time, a geomagnetic field measuring device by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), and old high-vacuum pumps used by Otto Stern (1888–1969) and Walther Gerlach (1889–1979) used in their famous experiments in quantum physics. Numerous old voltage measuring devices are also included. Many of the items are more than 100 years old and apparently originate from the estate of Physikalischer Verein in Frankfurt, which was founded in 1824.