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Merel van der Vaart

  This article was written by Bruce Eadie, intern on the Family History project. You wouldn’t happen to be called Bushby would you? Well, down at the Science Museum we know something about your great-great grandfather that you might like to know.  With the huge and growing popularity of genealogy, the Science Museum is keen to make its collections and archives available to family historians. Many family historians begin by hearing family stories told by older relatives, by leafing through […]

Tape-players and tape-recorders were perhaps the most important instruments for many of electronic music’s pioneers, and for the staff of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in particular. With few electronic instruments existing, early sonic explorers were forced to adapt and abuse existing technologies, and practices such as tape-splicing soon became vital tools in the search for new sounds. Since then, the situation has changed dramatically for most musicians and electronic instruments and equipment have become ever more accessible and affordable. Or […]

Recently, one of my colleagues sent me this link to a small synthesizer hidden in a book. The synthesiser is a bought piece of equipment, but it’s designed to be hacked and modified by whoever uses it and this particular owner probably had a good reason to keep it hidden. Or he just thought it would be fun to stick a synth in an old book. Either way, this quirky instrument instantly reminded me of one of the objects in […]