Will Stanley writes about the recent recording of BBC Radio 4’s Infinite Monkey Cage in the Science Museum’s IMAX theatre.
Our world-class collection forms an enduring record of scientific, technological and medical achievements from across the globe. Come behind the scenes as we explore new object acquisitions and meet the conservation team.
Inventor in Residence Mark Champkins writes about drawing inspiration from the Science Museum.
Charlotte Connelly is a Content Developer on Information Age, a new exhibition opening in 2014. She works on stories about mobile phones, radio and television. Diana McCormack and Esther Sharp are conservators based at the Science Museum’s stores at Wroughton. This week I’ve headed up to Manchester to talk about a tiny part of Information Age at the biggest ever history of science conference. Together with some other people from the Information Age team I’m running a special session about […]
This 3D printed gun has a short, but complex history.
Sam Potts, Communications Officer at the National Railway Museum writes about a rather special gathering in York for Mallard75. On 3 July 1938 Mallard made history when it became the fastest steam locomotive in the world. The locomotive reached 126mph on the East Coast main line, a record which still stands today, 75 years later. Mallard is a streamlined A4 Pacific, designed by Sir Nigel Gresley to be the flagship locomotive for the London & North Eastern Railway’s Silver Jubilee services. In total […]
Jennifer Bainbridge, Conservator on the new Information Age gallery, writes about the conservation of Morse code tapes from the SS Great Eastern, 1865, a ship which undertook the laying of transatlantic telegraph cable. John Liffen, Curator of Communication, provides details of transcription. As one of the conservators working on the new Information Age gallery, opening in September 2014, I handle, document and carry out treatments on objects destined for display. Working so closely with artifacts means I am often in the lucky position […]
Jen Kavanagh, Audience Engagement Manager, writes about the search for stories for our new Information Age gallery opening in September 2014. How do you send a message? Text? Email? What was used before computers? During the reign of Queen Victoria, it was the telegram. Do you have one tucked away somewhere at home that you could bring in and talk about? The Science Museum is inviting you to bring your telegrams into one of our collecting days at the Dana Centre (behind the Science Museum on […]
Jen Kavanagh, Audience Engagement Manager, writes about the search for stories for our new Information Age gallery opening in October 2014. Calling former telephone operators! We want to speak to the ladies who worked as telephone exchange operators in the 1950s and early 1960s, particularly around Enfield, London. We would like our visitors to be able to listen their memories alongside a display of the last manual telephone exchange in our Information Age gallery. Before automated systems were introduced in the 1960s, phone calls were manually connected by young female telephone […]
Kate Davis, a Learning Resources Project Developer, discovers the story behind one of our more unusual objects. The fifth floor of the Science Museum is a fascinating area, full of gory and often unusual paraphernalia related to the history of medicine. One of the more unusual objects lurking in this gallery is the Drug Castle. Our knowledge of medicine and how civilisations have treated illness and disease stretches all the way back to the earliest writings on the subject from […]
A while ago the Science Museum took part in a project called First Time Out – where museums put on display a ‘treasure’ from their stored collections that had never before been seen in public. Well we’re giving it a go again – but this time the project is larger than ever. Ten museums, from all over England, have paired up to swap objects from their collections, with the Science Museum partnering with the Discovery Museum in Newcastle (a great […]
Dr Helen Peavitt explores the technology used to conquer Mount Everest.
Rachel Boon, Assistant Curator of Technologies and Engineering, writes about Apollo 10 and four decades of space exploration. Forty four years ago today, on 26th May 1969, NASA’s Apollo 10 command module and crew of three splashed into the Pacific Ocean after eight days in space. The mission, a dry run for Apollo 11, returned valuable information about our nearest cosmic neighbour ahead of the Moon landing later that year. The team of three astronauts – Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan […]