This paper discusses the creation of the Stephen Hawking Archive in collaboration with scientific colleagues, technical and personal assistants and with the use of assistive communications technology, advocating for the addition of further digital material to the Stephen Hawking Archive.

This article explores a recent project, co-investigated by University of East Anglia and the Science Museum Group (SMG), which used film (old movies and new digital films) to tell novel stories about and across the SMG’s medical and media collections.

A reflection on reconstructing Zygalski sheets, a manual grid-based system used by the Polish Cipher Bureau and Bletchley Park to decrypt German Enigma cipher messages, for the Top Secret exhibition at the Science Museum Group from 2019 to 2022.

Editorial: Issue 17

This study uses a mnemonic device called SPEAKING (Hymes, 1974) to analyse The Amazing You. This elaborate health exhibition, which ran at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) from 2008–2017, aimed to affect visitor behaviours.

Informed by the ‘SMG Research Conference 2019: The Place of Industry’, this article reflects on the Whitworth’s history; from its founding principles to its new mission and vision to explore the continuing debates surrounding the relationship between art and industry.

Despite the steam locomotive being the persistent image of railway history, this article aims to show that the railway’s early use of electrical technology within its business systems meant it was in closer alignment with the emergence of computer technology and its forebears than is usually assumed.

A knowledge capture method for use with heritage machinery in museums and cultural venues to reduce the risk of knowledge and skills loss, including a case study involving the historic industrial textiles machinery at the Science and Industry Museum.

I will argue that ‘iron lung’ became eponymous as it connected the material reality of the NPV with imagined sensory experiences for publics in the UK, highlighting the often contradictory earlier metaphors of modernity and sound.

Dame Margaret Weston, DBE, FMA (7 March 1926–12 January 2021), obituary

In addition to uncovering the life and work of a relatively unknown immigrant engineer, this paper indicates how a detailed study of a small ephemeral museum object can unlock wider historical horizons.