Soemtron visit Sömmerda, September 2009

Skip to navigation

September 2009
We drove out to Germany to pay a visit to the Historisch-technische Museum in Sömmerda - website. Frau Speiser (museum curator) kindly gave us a guided tour of the museum, and also the non-public archive building a short distance away. Mainly covering local history and peoples (especially Nicolaus von Dreyse) as you might expect, this excellent museum also has a fledgling technical section with exhibits from more recent times when the various Soemtron brands and the V.E.B. Büromaschinenwerk Sömmerda cooperative were in full production. Supported by the local community and government this museum is well worth a visit, cannot be praised highly enough, and deserves all the support they can get.

We met with a group of past employees from the Soemtron factory (photos below) to discussed the Soemtron range of machines and told them how we became involved, showing them this website. A short while later during a private tour of the archive (its not open every day), and quite out of the blue, we received an offer of a Soemtron ETR224!. Having thought that with the very small production run of ETR224's (<526), the museum's machine was the only one left, how wrong we were! there were two more in a private collection!

The unexpected and gracious offer of this ETR224 completes our collection of Soemtron machines - ETR220 - 222 - 224, and as far as we know is the only complete collection[1] outside that of the museum in Sömmerda. Many, many thanks must go to the gentleman who offered us the ETR224 from his own collection, and to the many interested people at the Museum. This just confirms our thoughts on the visit of the friendly, eager, courteous and helpful reception we received from the people of Sömmerda.

Soemtron 434	Soemtron 434	Museum group	Museum building
Museum building	Industrial area model	Industrial area model	Industrial area model
Industrial area model	Industrial area model	Soemtron ETR224	Soemtron ETR224
Soemtron ETR224	Soemtron ETR224	Soemtron ETR224	Soemtron ETR224
Soemtron ETR224	224 printer	224 printer	224 printer
224 printer	224 printer	224 printer	224 rear
224 rear	224 printer	224 reassembly	224 reassembly
224 reassembly	224 reassembly	These thirty one images © 2009 www.soemtron.org Click any photo for a larger image

Museum group	Museum group	Bernard Green
These four images © 2009 Historisch-technische Museum, Sömmerda Click any photo for a larger image






	These twenty one images © 2009 Bernard Green Click any photo for a larger image

Possibly not a complete collection, as it now seems there was a fourth machine, a Soemtron ETR221. This would appear to be a very rare printing version of the ETR220, housed in two units with a desktop keyboard and printer connected through an umbilical cable to the main electronics unit. As a possible precursor to the ETR224 this unit is thought to have suffered from propagation delay and timing problems caused by the umbilical cable between the printer and the electronics unit and so never made it into production. Apparently only ten prototypes were made.[back] [top]