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 […]
Meet the staff members that make the Museum so unique and get the insider scoop on upcoming exhibitions, research projects and new objects.
Our Writer in Residence, Mick Jackson, has published a short memoir, ‘My Running Hell’ commissioned by the Museum as part of his residency to tie in with the season of sport in London this summer.
Find out what happened at our History Open House event
This week saw the second gathering of Google’s Luvvies and Boffins at the Science Museum.
Find out more in our guest blog post from Peter Barron, Director of External Relations at Google
Want to find out who is going to change our world? The answer was given last night at a dinner held in the Science Museum.
Guest post by Roger Highfield
On Wednesday 30 May Sound Artist-in-residence, Aleks Kolkowski, began his series of live demonstrations of wax cylinder recording, using an original hand-cranked Edison phonograph c.1909. Aleks was joined by the talented Jason Singh, a beatboxer and vocal sculptor, who is currently the Sound Artist-in-residence at the V&A museum. Both residencies are part of Supersonix, an Exhibition Road Cultural Group project. Aleks gave a fascinating introduction to the process and technology used to inscribe sound onto a wax cylinder; the pressure […]
This year students from across the UK have been investigating climate change stories from their local area with the help of the Museum’s Climate Science Outreach team.
Tonight in front of an influential audience at our Imax theatre, Eric Schmidt discussed the importance of Science Museums.
Are you an arts organisation in search of inspiration? Is your local history society researching your science and technology heritage? Or are you a patient group interested in the history of a medical profession or practice?
What was the popular culture of science like in Britain, in the fifties and sixties? The Science Museum has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to start exploring this question. The 1950s and 1960s were years of technological expansion. In 1957, the space race started, with the USSR’s successful launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. In 1969, the USA put humans on the Moon. In 1954 the European organisation for nuclear research, […]
In January the Science Museum was asked to take part in the BBC’s Stargazing Live events at Woolwich and Charlton house. It was to coincide with the second series of the very successful Stargazing Live show.
Entertaining stampeding children, discussing the complexities of the human mind, and making people marvel at incredible illusions – all part of a day’s work at Lottolab