When I was asked to help develop ideas about early radio broadcasting for a proposed new gallery at the Science Museum I soon realised that I needed help to build up my knowledge quickly. I began with the usual resources – I read some books, looked online and scoured our collection for likely looking objects to explore. While all of these resources could provide me with a technical understanding of the history of radio, I struggled to get a grasp […]
Mark Champkins our Inventor in Residence talks about the inspiration behind the ‘black hole light’ he created for Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday.
Astronauts, rockets and multi-coloured stars – visitors to our Launchpad gallery seem to have space on the brain.
These days John Hunter (1728-1793), the celebrated surgeon, anatomist and collector, lies safely buried amongst the great and good in Westminster Abbey – not far from the likes of Ben Jonson, David Livingstone and Robert Stephenson. This was not always the case. For over 60 years, his body lay in the vaults of London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields church. Only in 1859, when the vaults were being cleared for public health reasons, were Hunter’s remains reinterred in their current prestigious place. This transfer was […]
If you were setting out on a journey to space what would your soundtrack be? For one night only on Thursday 26 January the Science Museum will be exploring just that.
As part of the Science Museum’s celebration of Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday, leading contemporaries have paid tribute to his remarkable impact on the field of cosmology.
Despite many years as a curator, the sheer variety of objects tucked away within our medical collections can still surprise me. Collections that are also so large that, despite a strong presence within the public displays at the Science Museum, only around 5% of our medical objects are on show at any one time. Inevitably, some categories of objects have a higher public profile than others. For example, while the eagle-eyed visitor to the Science Museum’s galleries may spot a snuff box […]
Whenever I go to London by train I see the civil engineering works outside Paddington Station for the new Crossrail link. There is a big hole ready to take the giant German-made tunnelling machines which will soon start work boring the Crossrail tunnels under London. These amazing pieces of engineering are often scrapped after their job is done. They are far too large to fit in any museum, so we have a model of the similar machines used to bore the Channel Tunnel in the 1990s. However, at our Large Object store at […]
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 […]
Fancy watching Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton dressed up in sumo costumes to wrestle over who truly discovered gravity? Well that’s the kind of thing that happens in Science Museum Live – and the second season is starting in January 2012.
We have commissioned a series of photographic portraits of Professor Hawking to celebrate his 70th birthday at the end of this week. He is best known for his work on time, black holes and the Big Bang. But in a New Scientist interview to celebrate his birthday, he admits he spent most of the day thinking about women. “They are,” he says “a complete mystery.”
We have some amazing volunteers doing fantastic work helping us uncover more about our collections. Regina and Alix started volunteering with the Science Museum in October 2011, and are currently working on a project to catalogue the museum’s extensive microscope slide collections. Here’s the first in a series of blogs they’ve written to let you know more about what they’ve discovered in the basement of our store at Blythe House… Imagine a room full to the brim with curious wooden […]