Christmas and new year message from the President, December 2017.

2017 has been a good year for our Society!

One of the highlights was the generous donation of our treasurer, Lars Mathiesen, of his heirloom: the unique half-size writing ball to the Design Museum, Copenhagen. This brilliant piece of mechanic genius was originally constructed as a specimen to accompany a patent application. It has been painstakingly and expertly restored to its glory by another of our founding members: Dieter Eberwein. The donation comes with an agreement that the Museum will show the writing ball in a prominent place and will arrange an exhibition about Rasmus Malling-Hansen and his writing balls – evidently from the point of view of their excellent design qualities!

Another very positive development during the past year has been the expanding research into the life and achievements of Rasmus Malling-Hansen. In the National Archives and similar sources we have found more than 100 previously unknown documents, which have been painstakingly photographed, transcribed and integrated into our website with comments, explanations and additional illustrations. Our society has for the last 11 years been in the process of conducting a local history project, and it is growing every year in terms of depth and width. We are presenting thousands of documents and illustrations on our website – free of charge to use for the public(but with acknowledgement of the source.

Members and friends of the international Rasmus Malling-Hansen Society will meet again in 2018 for our bi-annual General Meeting. It is likely that it will be on June 3 and probably in Germany. More details to be announced!

As always, we would be happy to get more members!– in particular we are in need of more young members! And we would also very much welcome more members to join our research efforts, unearthing and working on new documentation about Rasmus Malling-Hansen, his life and multi-faceted achievements.

With these words I would like to wish all members and friends of the international Rasmus Malling-Hansen Society a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2018! I hope to see you at our next general meeting!

Jørgen Malling Christensen
President of the international Rasmus Malling-Hansen Society