"One small step for man ." - It has been over 50 years since Niel Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon on July 21, 1969 at 3:56 minutes and 20 seconds (CET). But man's fascination with traveling to the moon is much older. No wonder, then, that up to 600 million people on Earth watched live on television as Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. Hundreds of millions more listened to the Apollo 11 mission on the radio. The moon landing was the first live global broadcast event and a showcase of achievement for the then-new mass medium.
This makes the Apollo 11 mission one of the biggest media events in history to this day. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, celebrated worldwide in 2019, the Museum für Kommunikation Frankfurt is showing the exhibition "Spaceship Living Room. The Moon Landing as a Media Event". The presentation traces the fascination with the moon landing in East and West and asks about the interactions between space travel, television and global communicative networking.
The show, designed by Franziska Isensee in reference to the angular wooden design of contemporary televisions, is divided into seven sections. The 100 or so exhibits in the show come mainly from the collections of the Post and Telecommunications Museum Foundation, the Hermann Oberth Space Museum in Feucht and the WDR Historical Archive. Numerous excerpts from feature films, educational broadcasts and WDR's marathon broadcast provide moving images, while listening stations await with original sounds from the 1950s and 1960s and eyewitness accounts.
The enthusiasm for the subject of a journey into space is reflected in objects dating back to the late 19th century, such as early editions of Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" from 1865. In everyday culture in both East and West, the exploration of outer space, which was perceived as imminent, had already had a firm place since the post-war period, for example in toys, in popular science literature or in films. This aspect is also present in the exhibition.
This beautiful exhibition can be seen until 10. January 2021
Opening Hours
Tuesday to Sunday 11am - 6pm
