Roger Highfield, Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group, writes about bringing Westminster to the Science Museum. The Science Museum witnessed democracy in action this morning when it hosted a meeting of one of the committees used by the House of Commons to provide a means of impartial, systematic scrutiny of government. The chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee, Andrew Miller MP, has held evidence sessions outside Westminster, notably in Sheffield for its “bridging the valley […]
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 […]
To celebrate Alan Turing’s birthday this week, curator David Rooney gave the #TuringTour, a tweeted live tour of our Codebreaker exhibition. The full tour can be seen here, but we’ve pick out a few highlights for you below… Our #TuringTour starts with Pilot ACE, probably the most significant #Turing object ever http://t.co/AhloRzaZRV pic.twitter.com/L1uocI4OiZ — Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) June 18, 2013 Pilot ACE is the computer #Turing designed, and was in its day, the fastest computer in existence #TuringTour pic.twitter.com/GrgS3suSQp — Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) […]
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 […]
Alice Lighton, content developer for our Collider exhibition, writes about the history of quantum physics. Collider: step inside the world’s greatest experiment opens in November 2013 with a behind-the-scenes look at the famous CERN particle physics laboratory. The air brimmed with excitement on this momentous day. The discovery of the particle confirmed a theory that had taken years to devise, and justified the toil of hundreds of scientists. You might think I’m referring to the Higgs boson – the particle that explains mass, […]
A guest blog post by Vivienne Parry, MRC Council Member This year the Medical Research Council (MRC) celebrates 100 years of life-changing discoveries. The MRC has its roots in the National Insurance Act, passed by Parliament in 1911. At the turn of the last century, TB was as great a concern to the Edwardians as cancer is to us today. Desperate for cures, government proposed that one penny per working person per year should be taken from their national insurance […]
This summer, our IMAX theatre will be transformed into a steampunk world for ‘The Energy Show’. This theatre show for families explores the different forms of energy through some explosive experiments live on stage. It stars futuristic science students Annabella and Phil plus their lab assistant Bernard. These initial sketches from designer Janet Bird demonstrate the distinctly steampunk feel to The Energy Show. Science Museum Live presents ‘The Energy Show’ at the Science Museum from 22 July – 31 […]
Curator David Rooney is preparing to take our Twitter followers on a rather unique tour. Last June, we opened our Codebreaker exhibition, which reveals the life and legacy of a truly remarkable man, Alan Turing. The opening coincided with Turing’s 100th birthday, and over the last 12 months it has been a pleasure to read your comments and welcome so many of you to our exhibition. To anticipate Turing’s birthday this year, I’ll be giving a live tour of the […]
Jared Keller, a researcher and former Science Museum Explainer, discusses some of our hidden objects and the science behind them. Today we’re looking at the Sound Section of Launchpad and one of my favourite exhibits, “Sound Bite”. If you’re a bit rusty on your Sound Bite science, there is an old BBC refresher course on the principles of sound travelling through a medium/solid. The important thing to remember is that sound waves can travel through a solid material like a […]
This blog post is writted by Chloe Vince, volunteer for Information Age. Information Age is a brand new communications gallery opening in 2014. “Joel, I’m calling you from a ‘real’ cellular telephone. A portable handheld telephone.” These words, spoken by Martin Cooper – a senior engineer at Motorola, to Joel Engel – a competing developer at the company Bell Labs, began the first ever conversation to be had on a mobile telephone. It was 40 years ago that Martin Cooper, […]