23 The well-known observatory tower of the Beyer Building, the landmark of the TUD Dresden University of Technology, houses a selection of the most notable objects belonging to the collection of historical instruments from the fields of astronomy and geodesy. Several display cabinets present to the interested visitor such instruments as theodolites, levels, a telescopic alidade, sextants, chronometers and meridian circles.* The Collection has its origins in the stock of devices belonging to the Geodetic Institute of the former Royal Polytechnical College and its later incarnation, the Technical College of Dresden. This means that most of the exhibited instruments were actually previously used in teaching. At the Technical School founded in 1828, Wilhelm Gotthelf Lohrmann gave geodetic lectures and conducted exercises already during the first years of the institution’s existence. Technological development, especially in the booming railway industry in Saxony, made the training of experts with skills in geodesy a matter of urgency. Lohrmann, who had already been put in charge of the valuable historical collections of the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in the Dresden Zwinger in 1827, now also became head of the Technical School. This was initially located in the former garden pavilion on the Brühl Terrace in the centre of the city. Technical training in surveying, which in those days was still quite hands-on, included site surveying and staking out building designs. At that time, the entire training for a surveyor was still very closely linked to civil engineering and architecture. Following Lohrmann’s untimely death in 1840, Johann Andreas Schubert – originally a mechanical engineer – assumed responsibility for significant parts of the lectures in geodesy and astronomy. In order to lighten Schubert’s extensive duties, his former student Christian August Nagel took up the position of Schubert’s assistant from 1849, and that of a regular teacher (Ordentlicher Lehrer) for geodesy at what had become the Royal Polytechnic School from 1851 (Peschel 1953). In this way, geodesy was elevated to a separate subject for the first time and an independent Geodetic Institute was set up in the new building at Antonsplatz, constructed in 1846. For a while, this new building helped alleviate, at least to some extent, the permanent shortage of space in the former Brühl pavilion and also in the former armory building at the Jüdenhof, which since 1833 had served as the second location of the Technical School. Working conditions for students and teachers were improved, too. After Nagel, a noted expert in geodesy, had taken up his post, he was able to modernize and expand the stock of instruments comprehensively during his more than 40-year term in office. At his instigation, one of the most significant instruments in today’s Collection − the Repsold Universal Instrument − was acquired for the campaigns of the Central European Arc Measurement and the Royal Saxon Triangulation. Archival records from the Saxon State Archives (SächsStA) show that about 200 to 250 thalers were allocated for the procurement of a “geodetic apparatus” in 1859. After plans for using the universal instrument had been The Collection of Astronomic-Geodetic Instruments LUTZ GRAEFE Large universal instrument by Pistor & Martins (1862) It is one of the most important exhibits in the Collection. Nagel used it for the Central European Arc Measurement, in addition to the Repsold Instrument. * Due to the renovation of the Beyer Building, the observatory is expected to be accessible again in 2024.
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