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Selina Hurley

As part of the medical curatorial team, Selina works on the medical galleries redevelopment project and has a broad interest in the history of medicine and medical science. During her time at the museum, Selina has worked on meteorites, clocks, climate science and almost everything in between.

March marks the 100th anniversary of the first cars made by William Morris (1877-1963). The first was a Morris-Oxford Light Car. William Morris began making and repairing bicycles in his work and gradually went onto to hiring and repairing cars before making his own. Although his business was disrupted by the First World War, Morris went on to dominate the British car industry and was made a baron in 1934 and 4 years later Viscount for his services to car manufacturing. He […]

This blog post was written by Johanna Stevens-Yule Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta both made names for themselves with their pioneering work on electricity—however; electricity would prove to be the destructive force to the majority of their actual instruments. Here at the Science Museum we find ourselves in the position of owning Galvani’s very own electrostatic machine, but this so very easily might not have been the case. Unlike several other pieces of Galvani’s equipment, it escaped being destroyed in […]

This blog post was written by Pippa Murray Today marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of the London Underground – arguably one of London’s most iconic landmarks. Of course back in 1863, when the first tube line opened, the map looked remarkably different from the one we know today with only the metropolitan line running between Paddington and then onto Farringdon Street (a stretch measuring only six kilometers). Yet as the network of tunnels evolved throughout the late 19th […]

This post was written by Emily Yates, object conservator at Blythe House As a conservator, it is always fun to work on weird objects, even the gory ones! This beautiful, if macabre, wax model will be on shown in the exhibition Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men at  the Museum of London, running 19 October 2012 until 14 April 2013. To get her looking her best before going on show I had to remove the layers of dust and dirt that had built […]

After learning about the manufacturing process of bread during a bread baking course Pippa Murray got to thinking about what other mass produced products used in our day to day lives have evolved in order to save us time… Traditionally bread making is a lengthy process. Hours of kneading, proving and baking produce just one meagre loaf. It’s no wonder that so many of us choose to buy a loaf from the shops instead of making it ourselves! The invention of […]

This blog was written by Jared Keller, a part-time Explainer. With so many visitors flying in from abroad, security has been a hot-button issue in the capital all summer. So much so that we here at the Science Museum thought we should offer our expertise and services to make sure everything goes off without a hitch. So we’re proud to offer this  – a 1930s “Burgot” Burglar and Fire Alarm.   Burgot Burglar and Fire Alarm, c. 1939 ( Science […]

This article was written by Ben Russell, Curator of Mechanical Engineering  1712 was a red letter year for humankind: for the first time, rather than just relying on wind, water, or muscles, a new energy source became available: the steam engine. Thomas Newcomen of Dartmouth took the earlier, and rather ineffective, steam pump by Thomas Savery, christened by him the ‘Miner’s Friend’, and expanded it up into a truly practical industrial machine that harnessed the power of the atmosphere. The […]

After the heady celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee, which memorabilia are you going to hold on to? When Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne in 1952 and was crowned the year after a whole host of memorabilia was available. We have a range of coronation day items celebrating the crowning of the current monarch as well as monarchs across Europe.   Both the mug and pill box are part of the museum’s Plastics and Modern Materials collections as examples of […]

Like most curators, I’m always on the look-out for interesting stories and things that capture public interest. So it won’t be much of a surprise to find I’ve been watching and reading Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth. Call the Midwife chronicles the work of the author as a midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. As you would expect we have a large collection of objects relating to midwifery and obstetrics. The piece of kit that caught […]

One of the best parts of a curator’s job is collecting new objects. It can sometimes feel like a daunting task but occasionally serendipitous circumstances lead to a great acquisition. A member of staff from GE Healthcare was visiting the Science and Art of Medicine gallery of the 5th floor of the museum and noticed that their company had recently developed a new updated version of a piece of kit. Fortunately for us, they offered us a model for the Museum’s […]

Happy 2012 to everyone! The New Year Honours List has been announced and some will be starting off 2012 with new titles or new letters after their names. A number of scientists and medical researchers were honoured this year. Unsurprisingly the Science Museum’s medical collection has its fair share of sirs and dames as well as OBEs and Orders of Merit. Arthur Weston made a number of artificial prostheses while imprisoned in Stalag VIIIB/344 (Lamsdorf) during the Second World War. […]