This week, hundreds of charities across the UK (including the Science Museum) are taking part in Remember A Charity Week, a campaign which aims to raise awareness of the positive impact of leaving a gift to a charity in your Will.
Leaving a gift can create a long-lasting legacy, and gifts to the museum have enabled us to inspire scientific curiosity and wonder for generations of visitors.
All this week, the museum is celebrating wonderful objects in our collection which were given as gifts to the museum, including these beautiful buttons featuring hot air balloons, intricate calculating machines and an early model steam engine.
The historic James Watt collection was also given to the museum as a gift. One of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution, James Watt was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer and chemist, known best for his Watt steam engine. His work has been so important to science and society, that the unit of power (the watt) was named after him and he is featured on the £50 note. In 2011, Watt was one of seven inaugural inductees to the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.
The James Watt collection includes his workshop, which has been preserved and recreated in the museum. The workshop is an astonishing time-capsule containing its original furniture, windows, doors and fireplace and 8,430 fascinating objects left as they were in Watt’s lifetime. You can visit Watt’s workshop for free, thanks this amazing charitable gift left to the Science Museum.
If you would like to know more about leaving a legacy to the museum, please get in touch with Fia Parry on 0207 942 4027 / fia.parry@sciencemuseum.ac.uk.