The TwentseWelle museum in Enschede has only been open for a week in its current form. It is therefore your last chance to see the museum in its current design. NEMO Kennislink went to visit and saw a bison, mammoth and forerunner of the computer.
“There's so much to see here!” says a ten-year-old boy, looking around and then tilting his head back to peer at the skeleton of a real mammoth. He certainly has a point there. For example, the mammoth is next to a huge stuffed bison, but in the display cases around it you can also see a lot of objects from the Ice Age – and beyond.
In total there are about one hundred and fifty thousand objects to admire in the museum, says Edwin Plokker, former geography teacher and now curator at the museum. In addition to natural history objects, there are also many objects from the textile industry. That has everything to do with the history of the museum. TwentseWelle arose from a merger of Natuurmuseum Enschede, Textielmuseum Jannink and the Van Deinse Institute, an institute that focused on acquiring knowledge of the nearby living environment.
Although the 'legacy' of these museums is clearly reflected, there is indeed a common thread to discover in the route you take in the museum. It shows how people gradually acquired a place in then still very barren landscapes, and then, thanks to new technological developments, increasingly began to bend the environment to their own ends.
Bison skin
But first, let's go back to the mammoth, which is a huge eye-catcher when you enter the museum. “This skeleton is real,” museum guide Jan Wennink tells the boy and a group of students who have just visited the museum. “And although the mammoth isn't from here, he could have just roamed around here with some of his kind. Where we now mainly think of the North and South Poles when we think of ice, the Netherlands and actually the whole of Northern Europe was for centuries conceived with land ice. You can also see how cold it was then by the bison's fur. It is nice and woolly and it had to be, because without it it would freeze to death. Mammoths also had woolly skin.”
“Did the mammoths and bison also encounter dinosaurs?” a girl asks, freeing herself from her mother's hand to gently stroke the bison skin. “No, not that,” says Wennink. “The Netherlands had two ice ages, the first was between 475,000 and 410,000 years ago and the second, known as the Saalian, approximately between 280,000 and 130,000 years ago. Dinosaurs lived much earlier:between 220 million and 65 million years ago. They probably died out due to a meteorite impact, but you can wonder whether they survived the cold ice age anyway.”
From the Ice Age we go to the time shortly after, via a model of a prehistoric farm. Archaeologists think first-century AD Germanic farms looked something like this, Wennink says, as we study the miniature farm—actually a glorified hut.
“When the ice started to melt due to climatic changes, it became easier for humans to survive,” says Wennink. “So more and more people came here. And instead of chasing and hunting roaming animals like reindeer, they could now till the ground and keep livestock.”
Weaving in the farm
When we round the corner, we make a big jump in time. We see what this new specialization of humans resulted in in the form of a scale-reconstructed farmhouse from 1800. You have to pull your head in quite a lot at the entrance; Back then people were a lot smaller than they are now.
Once inside the farmhouse, which is made of braided twig walls connected with clay, it feels cozy. A cauldron hangs over the fire and families stayed together with their animals, such as a cow, pig or sheep. Some residents also had a loom to make clothes.
Agriculture was not very easy due to the sandy soil in Twente. That is why a lot of flax was grown, which grew easily on the sandy soil. “Farming families made linen with their looms.”
An occupation that expanded over time; many families made linen and then sold it to merchants. “Especially in the winter months, when there was little to do on the fields, farmers' families used to weave a lot,” says Wennink.
The farmers did not become very rich from this. Compared to regions in the west of the Netherlands, Twente was a poor region with few (paved) roads.
TwentseWelle is a participant of the Science Weekend. The Weekend of Science is the stage of the future. Various organizations – companies, institutes, research institutions, universities, museums and observatories – will open their doors on 7 and 8 October 2017 to give visitors of all ages the opportunity to experience the world of science and technology live. They organize unique and exclusive activities, such as trials, experiments, demonstrations, open days, exhibitions and more.
Everyone is welcome to go backstage at the participating organizations. Look here for all activities during the Weekend of Science.
The era of the textile industry
Suddenly we hear a click, followed by a loud chatter. As we walk through, we notice that a huge weaving machine has been put into operation. We see wires flashing past between all kinds of coils. This brings us suddenly to the nineteenth century, when the industrial revolution took place. New inventions enabled the machine to take over more and more manual labour. Because the region already knew many people who were familiar with the manufacture of textiles, wealthy industrialists began to settle in Twente and built textile factories there, such as the Van Heek and ter Kuile families. “That was very good for the infrastructure,” says Wennink, “there were suddenly more roads, and the rich textile families also built parks.”
Moreover, to increase their textile production, they did not hesitate to use the latest technology in their factories. This is how one of the first jacquard looms, a programmable loom, ended up in Twente. “That machine worked with a punched card system, via a 0/1 code system, which is seen as a forerunner of the computer,” says Plokker, who walks past.
“It works just like a barrel organ,” he explains, when he sees some questioning looks on him. “There is a large, perforated sheet that spins at the top of the machine. But where a barrel organ is all about the music, the holes here determine the pattern to be woven. With a hole in the card, or a one, a pin can go through. It then pulls a wire up or down, so that a wire is skipped exactly at that spot. By pulling the correct pins up and down simultaneously, a pattern is created. If nothing has to happen, then the card shows a zero. The card with holes therefore consists of ones and zeros, gives instructions to the machine and thus works like a computer program before it even existed!”
What did people think of that invention at the time? “Not everyone was equally enthusiastic,” says Plokker. “In several places in Europe, workers were so angry that they lost their jobs because of the machine that they smashed workshops!”
If people in Twente had harbored the same fear, it would not have been necessary. The demand for textiles from Twente grew so strongly that there was still enough work. The average Twent turned from a poor farmer into a laborer who worked in the factory. And although a working day lasted about twelve hours, the working families, unlike the owners of the textile factories, did not get rich from it.
Perhaps the most memorable thing about a visit to the museum is a video clip that shows how poignant the class differences were. On the left of the screen we see a baby born in the family of a textile baron, on the right in a working-class family. Where the baby on the left begins his life in a beautiful, richly decorated crib, the working-class child lies in a kind of wooden manger with barely a blanket. The chances of them ever meeting as equals seem slim. Where we see the baby on the left grow into a boy who is in school, we see the right child toiling in a dark factory at the same age. Something he will continue to do for the rest of his life, while his peer starts managing factories and an estate.
“Eventually, the poor conditions for workers resulted in the major textile strikes,” says Wennink. “It was not about better wages, but about better equipment. Many manufacturers worked with outdated equipment. This increased the chance of weaving errors, which meant that you as a worker were paid less. This also increased the risk of accidents.”
Although the strike failed, all kinds of laws ensured that child labor was stopped and conditions improved. There is now hardly any textile industry in Twente, the factories either closed or moved to countries with lower wages.
From prehistoric humans to now
Fortunately, Twente now produces other products, as can be seen:from tasty dairy to matzos. And, high-tech has now arrived in the form of nanotechnology. “At the University of Twente they do a lot with that,” says Jan. “From labs-on-a-chip to inventions in the field of electronics and smart textiles.”
Interesting, you might say, but is there anything to be found for a non-Twent in this museum? The answer is a resounding yes. Although the museum focuses on the history of Twente, the TwentseWelle also provides a very nice insight into human development, from our predecessors in the form of prehistoric humans to the present day. The region is a kind of microcosm of how the world changed and what that meant for ordinary people. Moreover, it also makes you think about the downside of development in the form of environmental aspects. For example, by pedaling a bicycle, you can see how much energy it takes to play certain devices. In short, in a playful way you learn everything about how the world works and how it works. And what it took to create our current living environment.