Go back to article: Functionless: science museums and the display of ‘pure objects’

Figure 3

One colour photograph of a vacuum pump from the mid 1700s on display in the Putnam Gallery at Harvard University and one early engraved design of a similar vacuum pump

© Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University & BLRCS – Université de Montréal

(Left) Abbé Nollet’s vacuum pump from circa 1745–1749 as displayed in the Putnam Gallery. Photograph by Jean-François Gauvin. (Description available on Waywiser: http://waywiser.rc.fas.harvard.edu/view/objects/asitem/items$0040:13071) (Right) Engraving from Nollet, L’Art des expériences, vol. 2, plate 21, pp 447–504. Taken from the Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers website: http://cnum.cnam.fr/CGI/fpage.cgi?12C15.2/524/100/578/0065/0572 (accessed 17 October 2015). Courtesy of the BLRCS – Université de Montréal

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15180/160506/007