Science Museum Blog

The Science Museum is very pleased to announce our first ever Sound Artist in Residence, Aleks Kolkowski. In recent years Aleks has explored the potential of historical sound recording and reproduction technology to make contemporary mechanical-acoustic music. His works for singers, instrumentalists and even singing canaries often feature live-made sound inscriptions onto wax cylinders and lacquer discs using Edison phonographs and old disc recording lathes. Other activities include repurposing discarded digital CDs with 45rpm analog records and both sound installations […]

Here’s our next installment in the addictive history of medicine… Medicinal preparations of opium are usually associated with the Victorians, but their origins are much more ancient. References to poppy juice are mentioned on 7th century BC medical tablets from the Assyrian civilizations, and the Sumerians called the poppy the ‘plant of joy’. The Greeks used poppy preparations widely in their medicine, although most famously in the mixture called Theriac or Mithrate which was invented in the 1st century AD. […]

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away the Science Museum discovered the secret recipe for telling an awesome story.

We love receiving letters from our visitors. In this case, pupils used our feedback forms as a template to write down their views – things that they liked, disliked and what we could do differently.

  This article was written by Bruce Eadie, intern on the Family History project. You wouldn’t happen to be called Bushby would you? Well, down at the Science Museum we know something about your great-great grandfather that you might like to know.  With the huge and growing popularity of genealogy, the Science Museum is keen to make its collections and archives available to family historians. Many family historians begin by hearing family stories told by older relatives, by leafing through […]

From today an animated portrait of Stephen Hawking by David Hockney will be on display to the public as part of the Science Museum’s Stephen Hawking: A 70th birthday celebration display.

In the days before synthesisers, open source software and pirated soft-synths, electronic music pioneers had very few resources to create new and exciting sounds…

If you’ve ever been in hospital, there’s a good chance your doctor gave you morphine to help with the pain when recovering from a procedure. If you have ever had a bad cough, you might have been given a cough syrup with codeine in it. We don’t usually think of addictive substances as playing an important role in medicine, but the Science Museum’s pharmaceutical collection shows that these drugs have been widely used by doctors since ancient times. Opium in […]

This article was written by Ellie West-Thomas, Research Assistant for Electronic Music. Whilst exploring the Science Museum’s Stores at Blythe House, I came across something rather unusual. Being classically trained in music and music theory I have had to write a score and use musical notations on many occasions, but I never knew that a typewriter could be used to write sheet music. The Musicgraph or Musikriter, was invented by Lily Pavey, patented in 1961 and completed in 1963. Pavey was the […]

Last week, a new computer was launched, and within seconds, not only sold out, but also crashed the website! The Raspberry Pi is a British designed device, roughly the size of a credit card and costing a miniscule £22. It has been designed to inspire a new generation of schoolchildren to learn about programming.

On 10 October 2011, the Science Museum opened the exhibition Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic Music.

Fifty year ago today, the Royal College of Physicians published a report on the effects of smoking which clearly linked the habit to cancer, bronchitis and other health problems.  Although it came several years after the ground-breaking research by Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill which first raised the issue, it was this report which really marked a major shift in British attitudes towards smoking.  Change was not instantaneous, but in 1965 cigarette advertising had been banned on TV and […]