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The provenance and context of the Giustiniani Medicine Chest
In 1946 the Giustiniani Medicine Chest came into the Science Museum Collection having originally been bought in Italy in 1924 by an agent of Sir Henry Wellcome, for his medical collection. This article assesses its provenance and history.
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A royal gift? Mrs Strangways Horner’s small silver clock, 1740
This article celebrates the rediscovery of a small silver-cased clock allegedly given to Mrs Strangways Horner by Lady Archibald Hamilton on behalf of Augusta, Princess of Wales in 1740.
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‘Great ease and simplicity of action’: Dr Nelson’s Inhaler and the origins of modern inhalation therapy
This paper reconstructs the history and reception of the Dr Nelson’s Inhaler as a means of understanding the growth of inhalation therapy in the mid-nineteenth century.
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Understanding storm surges in the North Sea: Ishiguro’s electronic modelling machine
An introduction to one of the star objects in Mathematics: The Winton Gallery, an electronic storm surge modelling machine.
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Ventriloquised voices: the Science Museum and the Hartree Differential Analyser
This paper proposes the analogy of ventriloquism as a way of extending the discussion about how objects speak and are used to tell different stories to audiences in museums as ‘material polyglots’. It explores how the Science Museum has changed the voices, stories, and physical and instrumental functions of a particular object – the ‘Trainbox’ version of the Douglas Hartree’s Differential Analyser – since it was collected in 1949.
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A model instrument: the making and the unmaking of a model of the Airy Transit Circle
The article investigates the construction, reception and fate of a set of models of the Airy Transit Circle (the instrument that defined the Greenwich Prime Meridian) at the Exposition Universelle in 1855 and at the South Kensington Museum.
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Something in the Air: Dr Carter Moffat’s Ammoniaphone and the Victorian Science of Singing
This essay analyses representations of the ammoniaphone across nineteenth century advertising and the medical and musical press, and situates these representations within the broader Victorian fascination with the supremacy of Italian opera singers and the emergent corporeal anxieties of late nineteenth century consumer culture.
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Rather unspectacular: design choices in National Health Service glasses
This article discusses the provision of spectacles under the NHS scheme in Britain from 1946-86. It reveals there was no explicit consideration of consumer choice or fashion and argues that this limited design across the British optical industry.
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Visualising electricity demand: use and users of a 3D chart from the 1950s
A 3D chart of electricity demand in Manchester, 1951–54, is a tangible record of past practice, both of the electricity supply industry and its consumers. We offer a close inspection of the object, and generate ideas about the chart’s use and users.
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Writing sound with a human ear: reconstructing Bell and Blake’s 1874 ear phonautograph
This article describes the process and outcomes of a research project that involved reconstructing Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence J Blake’s ear phonautograph, an 1874 curiosity that used an excised human middle ear to visually inscribe sound waves.