PTB News 3/2000 (554 kB) PTB News 3/2000, English edition, Issue December 2000At its Berlin-Charlottenburg location, PTB inaugurated a modern laboratory building, which is also a classified historical monument, on 20 October 2000: The former German Museum for Industrial Safety was reconstructed as Hermann von Helmholtz Building.
The museum had been built from 1900 to 1903. It was heavily damaged during World War II and remained unoccupied for many years in the sequel. About ten years ago, PTB started on the reconstruction of the building which had been classified as a historical monument in the meantime. The building has now been named after the first president of the PTR and houses modern laboratories for metrological work in the fields of medical measurements (biomagnetism), thermal energy measurements, and information technology.
The completion of the Hermann von Helmholtz building marks a major advancement in the task of concentrating PTB Berlin at its Charlottenburg site. The concentration process was initiated by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and PTB soon after the German unification. In the end, it will allow to close down the present other Berlin branch of PTB in Friedrichshagen. This was formerly the location of the GDR Agency for Standardisation, Metrology and Commodities Testing (ASMW), the metrological tasks and duties of which were taken over by PTB in 1990.