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From Steam Engines to Artificial Intelligence: 200 Years of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology | KIT 1825–2025

A University’s History Is Also Written in Human Kindness

On 2 November 2026, I arrived at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) to teach Chinese for the first time. The journey from Stuttgart had been anything but smooth. Local transport disruptions and railway delays complicated my trip, and my train stopped about fifteen minutes short of Karlsruhe. Fortunately, I had left early, hoping to explore the campus before my classes began.

Once there, I managed to get lost. A student of German studies, who had himself arrived at the university only two weeks earlier, kindly helped me find my classroom. He also showed me the library and student cafeteria. When he discovered that I did not yet have a campus card, he even offered to pay for my meal.

The preparations for my courses had moved surprisingly quickly. I was told that more than seventy students had registered, and the secretary had arranged two classes within a week. Then, just before teaching began, my iPad refused to connect to the classroom display. Students in both classes generously lent me their laptops, while classmates from different countries participated attentively in the exercises.

Technology can fail unexpectedly, but human kindness is often the most reliable system of all. Watching these students learn, I rediscovered a sense of happiness in teaching that I had missed for some time. It also made me curious about the university itself. How had an institution founded in the age of steam developed into one researching artificial intelligence?

From Steam Power to Scientific Engineering: The Birth of Technical Education

In the early nineteenth century, Europe was undergoing a profound transformation. Steam engines converted heat into mechanical power, gradually freeing machines from their dependence on wind, water and animal labour. In September 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in England, while a Rhine steam navigation company was established in Karlsruhe that same month. Steam power was beginning to transform the movement of people and goods.

Meanwhile, the Rhine presented another engineering challenge. Johann Gottfried Tulla was advancing the regulation of the Upper Rhine, a project that had begun in 1817. Surveying terrain, calculating water flow and designing river courses required scientific knowledge and precise engineering methods. Humanity was no longer simply following the course of a river. Nature was increasingly becoming something that could be measured, calculated and deliberately reshaped.

On 7 October 1825, the Grand Duke of Baden signed the founding document of the Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe, the historical predecessor of today’s KIT. The growing complexity of machines, waterways and infrastructure demanded engineers who could do more than reproduce established techniques.

One of the decisive figures in this development was Ferdinand Redtenbacher, who arrived in Karlsruhe in 1841. By combining mathematics, mechanics and machine design, he helped transform mechanical engineering education. Students learned not merely to imitate the appearance of a machine, but to calculate dimensions, analyse movements and understand the forces involved.

When machines became objects of scientific design rather than products of experience alone, engineering education entered a new era.

From the Automobile to Electromagnetic Waves: When Science Changed Everyday Life

The next chapter of Karlsruhe’s history shows how scientific knowledge could eventually transform ordinary human experience.

In 1860, at the age of fifteen, Carl Benz entered the Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe to study mechanical engineering. In 1886, he patented his three-wheeled motor vehicle powered by a petrol engine. The automobile was not invented in a university laboratory, but by a former student whose engineering education had helped prepare him for a world of increasingly sophisticated machines.

The significance of technical education becomes particularly visible here: an abstract mathematical principle can eventually become a vehicle travelling along an ordinary road.

Another transformation began in a laboratory. Heinrich Hertz came to Karlsruhe in 1885 and conducted experiments that demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic waves. By producing electrical sparks and studying electromagnetic effects across space, he helped establish the experimental foundations of modern wireless communication.

Hertz was investigating a fundamental physical phenomenon, not designing today’s communication networks. Yet his discoveries would eventually contribute to technologies connecting people across enormous distances. Scientific discoveries often begin quietly; their consequences may echo through an entire age.

A century later, Karlsruhe became part of another communications revolution. On 3 August 1984, at 10:14 a.m., an email from the United States reached the University of Karlsruhe through the CSNET research network. It was not the world’s first email, but it marked an important step in Germany’s connection to international computer communication.

What once required specialised research networks gradually became an ordinary part of everyday life.

Yet the university’s history also contains a darker chapter. During the Nazi period, members of the academic community suffered persecution and exclusion. In 2016, KIT installed a memorial plaque commemorating those deprived of their right to teach or study. Scientific progress cannot be measured through inventions alone. Knowledge may expand humanity’s possibilities, but conscience helps determine whether those possibilities lead towards a garden or a precipice.

When Institutions Cross Boundaries: The Creation of KIT

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Karlsruhe had two major scientific institutions with different histories and organisational structures: the university and a large research centre.

In 2006, the University of Karlsruhe advanced a plan for closer integration with the research centre and succeeded in Germany’s Excellence Initiative. The ambition went beyond strengthening individual academic disciplines. Increasingly complex problems required cooperation between different fields of knowledge, research infrastructures and institutional traditions.

On 1 October 2009, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology officially came into existence through the merger of the university and Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. This was more than a change of name. It brought together university teaching and academic research with the long-term scientific work and large-scale facilities of a major research centre.

Today, challenges involving energy, materials, storage technologies and power systems demand cooperation across disciplines. Artificial intelligence and robotics similarly bring together mechanical engineering, computer science and control technologies.

From the engineering school established in 1825 to the research university created in 2009, it is not only the tools of science that have changed. The way humanity organises knowledge has changed as well.

Two centuries ago, engineers calculated the movement of steam-engine pistons on drawing boards. Today, scientists train artificial intelligence using powerful computer systems. Knowledge has taken on different forms, but the human desire to understand and solve problems remains.

At KIT, artificial intelligence research is no longer limited to industrial robotic arms. Researchers are bringing humanoid robots into schools, libraries and hospitals to explore how machines can interact with people and become part of everyday human life.

The Robotic Artificial Intelligence Real-World Lab, coordinated by Professor Tamim Asfour, even investigates how robots might help children learn foreign languages.

From the pistons of steam engines to the perception and interaction capabilities of modern robots, engineering science is confronting a new question: How can machines understand human needs?

Two Hundred Years Later: Knowledge Still Passes Between People

On 2 November 2026, I stood in a KIT classroom before students from different cultural backgrounds. They were learning to understand an unfamiliar language, discovering new characters, sounds and ways of expressing ideas.

Across two centuries, technology has transformed transportation, communication and scientific research. Yet the transmission of knowledge still depends on something profoundly human: the willingness to teach, to learn and to understand one another.

Machines can calculate, but calculation is not the same as human understanding. Technology can overcome physical distances, but it cannot replace the relationships through which people connect.

Perhaps one of the most enduring questions facing a two-hundred-year-old university is therefore surprisingly simple: How can we continue learning and living together in this world?

Across Civilizations

When the Ancient People of Chu Discovered Modern Science

After reading about KIT’s two hundred years of history, King Kaolie of Chu looked at the steam engines, automobiles and artificial intelligence systems before turning to Huang Xie, Lord Chunshen.

“Lord Chunshen,” he asked, “are you telling me that only the Germans understood science?”

Huang Xie laughed. “Your Majesty, have you forgotten what the people of Chu could do? More than two thousand years ago, our ancestors were already performing calculations, observing the heavens and recording celestial phenomena.”

I brought out the ancient Chinese multiplication table preserved among the Tsinghua bamboo manuscripts, known as the Suan Biao. Dating from the Warring States period, this remarkable mathematical text could be used for multiplication and also supported operations involving division and square roots.

The king looked delighted. “So our ancestors already possessed such impressive calculating skills more than two thousand years ago!”

Huang Xie then pointed towards ancient astronomical records. “Your Majesty, manuscripts discovered in the historical lands of Chu also preserve early observations of the heavens. The silk manuscripts from Mawangdui even contain illustrations of comets.”

I smiled. “The mathematical and astronomical traditions associated with the ancient Chu cultural world certainly deserve to be studied and understood today.”

The king fell silent for a moment before looking towards KIT’s modern laboratories.

“If people in both East and West were exploring the mysteries of heaven and earth,” he asked, “why is it still so difficult for different civilizations to understand one another after more than two thousand years?”

Huang Xie smiled. “Your Majesty, machines can cross mountains and rivers, and electromagnetic waves can carry messages across great distances. But neither can guarantee that human hearts will understand each other.”

I thought of the students in my classroom, coming from different countries and cultural backgrounds. Some were learning Chinese characters for the first time; others were trying to master the unfamiliar sounds and tones of the language.

“Your Majesty,” I replied, “language is also a bridge. We do not learn only words and characters. We learn another way of looking at the world. Perhaps that is why I have come to KIT.”

King Kaolie burst into laughter. “So, more than 2,300 years later, Lady Lingyin is not only studying trains and ships, but has travelled all the way to Germany to teach the language and culture of Chu!”

Huang Xie gently corrected him. “Your Majesty, she is teaching modern Chinese. But she has certainly brought something of the ancient Chu people’s curiosity about the world into her classroom.”

More than 2,300 years ago, people in ancient China used bamboo manuscripts to calculate numbers and studied celestial phenomena in their search to understand the universe. Today, science continues to bring distant parts of the world closer together, while understanding between civilizations still requires human bridges.

From bronze to microchips, from ancient star charts to artificial intelligence, humanity continues to ask the same fundamental questions: Who are we, and where are we going?

An autumn breeze drifted across the KIT campus in Karlsruhe. Two hundred years of university history and more than 2,300 years of ancient civilization seemed, for a moment, to meet quietly in the same place.