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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 […]

Chloe Vince, volunteer on the Information Age project takes a look at the humble computer mouse, Douglas Englebart’s best-known contribution to modern computing. Since its invention in 1963, the computer mouse has become an iconic image of personal computing. It was designed and developed by visionary engineer Douglas Engelbart who recently passed away on 4th July 2013 at the age of 88. This early version of the computer mouse bears very little resemblance to those that we use today – […]

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 […]

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, […]

Tilly Blyth, Keeper of Technologies and Engineering, writes about the hidden histories of information. Information Age, a new £15.6m communication gallery, will reveal how our lives have been transformed by communication innovations over the last 200 years. Our new gallery on information and communications technologies, Information Age, will open in Autumn 2014. It will look at the development of our information networks, from the growth of the worldwide electric telegraph network in the 19th century, to the influence of mobile phones […]