Frastanz museum makes electricity visible

ORF reports that the Electricity Museum in Frastanz aims to make the complexity of electricity easier to understand, using historic devices and demonstrations. It is entirely volunteer-run and is taking part in the 26th ORF Long Night of Museums on Saturday, when 81 museums and galleries are open across Vorarlberg and the Lake Constance region.

The collection includes old radios, washing machines, cookers and tape recorders, as well as exhibits on the history of radio and the inventors behind electricity generation. Retired volunteers put some of the devices into operation so visitors can see how television and radio once worked.

One highlight is a black-and-white television from 1950. The museum also has a Tesla coil that can produce a continuous electric arc about 1.5 metres high, and a mercury-vapour rectifier that converts three-phase alternating current from a large generator into direct current.

Museum director Manfred Morscher said that while the drive systems have changed over the years, the principle of electricity generation has changed little since Werner von Siemens developed the dynamo-electric principle.

Founded in 1997, the museum grew from an effort by Morscher and the E-Werke Frastanz museum association to restore an old hydroelectric power station and open it to the public. The former textile factory now houses seven museums, including the electricity museum, a fire service museum, a hunting museum, a rescue museum, a tobacco museum, a gramophone museum and a photography museum with a cinema.