%0 Journal Article
%T Energising connections in museum collections
%A Graeme Gooday
%A Kylea Little
%A Bernard Musesengwe
%A Cameron Tailford (Deceased)
%D 2022
%V Congruence Engine
%N Autumn 2022
%K coal
%K disaster
%K energy
%K film
%K heritage
%K miners
%K Museum
%K Newcastle-upon-Tyne
%K song
%K steam
%X The task of inter-connecting artefacts within the broad category of ‘energy’ across multiple heritage collections raises very significant challenges. Energy per se is itself invisible, manifested only in a bewildering diversity of technological mediations of its acquisition, storage or transformation from one form to another (e.g. chemical to thermal, or electrical to motive). And while energy usage via such technology is easily linked to industrial growth and global prosperity, it is also entangled in multiple stories of human and environmental destruction over many centuries, albeit unevenly distributed over social class and global location. How then can the Congruence Engine project draw some coherent stories together from heritage collections that hold energy-related artefacts of so many kinds? Our paper explores how the Congruence Engine’s Energy team will approach this task by taking as our starting point two specific collections of Newcastle’s Discovery Museum: steam turbines and coal mining. Focusing on that particularly convenient pair of preliminary case studies enables us to look ahead to how we can bring the Congruence Engine project’s digital humanities tools more fully to bear in linking such energetic heritage to other (at least part) digitised collections of films, photographs, songs and journals, etc. In so doing, we highlight the need to address the broader cultural landscape of energy, often involving emotional human stories, that bring meaning to museum audiences’ engagement with energy’s material culture. And in contrast to traditional museum narratives of energy history as the technocratic ‘conquering’ of nature, we consider how the Congruence Engine project could help to bring in a complementary approach: memorialising energy history instead as a human drama entangled with many forms of human loss.
%Z This article aims to build on the perspectives of a previous dedicated special issue of this journal ‘The Material Culture of Energy’, http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/issues/spring-2018/ especially Hiroki Shin, ‘Energy/Culture: a reading guide for historical literature’, Science Museum Group Journal, Spring 2018, http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/pdf/article/9516/energyculture-a-reading-guide and Frank Trentmann, ‘Getting to grips with energy: fuel, materiality and daily life’, Science Museum Group Journal Spring 2018, http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/issue-09/getting-to-grips-with-energy/. Moreover, it follows up the Energy team’s first blogpost for the Congruence Engine https://ceblog.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/2022/05/25/energising-materials-connecting-stories-local-national-and-international/.  
%Z Other informal UK partners in the project include Grace’s Guide to Industrial History, The National Archives, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Trust.
%Z For a social history see Astrid Kander et al, 2013, Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the last five centuries (New Jersey: Princeton University Press). 
%Z https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/ 
%Z Note the analogue with communications heritage: letters and telephone still survive even as we use email and text messaging, although the telegram and human messenger have both largely gone (see Jon Agar, ‘History of communications and the Congruence Engine: early thoughts and possibilities’ in this issue).
%Z A review of the Living With Machines exhibition can be found in this issue.
%Z https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/search-our-collections/ 
%Z https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/ 
%Z See websites of both these projects for more information: https://www.electrifyingthecountryhouse.org/ and https://electrifyingwomen.org/. 
%Z For more information see Geoff Horsman, Evolution of the Parsons land steam turbine (Siemens company, privately published, 2019); Steam turbine technology at CA Parsons after joining Siemens (Siemens company, privately published, 2020). 
%Z Thanks to Kylea Little for this information.
%Z https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co43831/marsaut-safety-lamp-1880s-oil-lamp-miners-lamps-miners-safety-lamps 
%Z For a popular illustration on YouTube, see ‘Steam Turbine Ship Gate-crashing the Queen 1897 Charles Parsons’, Season 1 Episode 42 https://youtu.be/MOY1BNUqSMs (last accessed 1 November 2022). 
%Z https://discoverymuseum.org.uk/plan-your-visit/planning-your-visit 
%Z F G H Bedford, ‘Sixty years with CA Parsons Ltd, 1901–1961’, Charles Parsons papers, Tyne & Wear archives, reference: L/PA 1275
%Z Bedford, pp 6–9
%Z Bedford, pp 12–18
%Z Bedford, p 43
%Z The digitised collection of The Woman Engineer can be found on the IET website: https://www.theiet.org/membership/library-archives/the-iet-archives/online-exhibitions/women-and-engineering/the-woman-engineer-journal/ (last accessed 31 October 2022)
%Z The digitised volume can be found here: https://twej.theiet.org/twej/WES_Vol_1.html 
%Z The digitised volume can be found here: https://twej.theiet.org/twej/WES_Vol_1.html
%Z For a discussion of Historic England’s photographic resources see Wayne Cocroft and Ben Russell in this issue. In further research we will look at British Film Institute materials on power stations and their employees.
%Z Similarly, Coal Face (1935), the first and highly innovative movie made by the GPO Film Unit, does not specifically highlight dangers. 
%Z David Berry, ND, Blue Scar, BFI Screen Online,  http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/582095/index.html 
%Z Michael Brooke, King Coal, BFI Screen Online, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1373461/index.html; https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6a653f90 
%Z The Stars Look Down (1940) | BFI <a href="The Stars Look Down (1940) | BFI">https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b772005eb
%Z For more information on these see: ‘Huddersfield Exposed’ https://huddersfield.exposed/wiki/Don%27t_Go_Down_the_Mine,_Dad_(Bamforth_series_4583) and the Lucerna project: http://lucerna.exeter.ac.uk/set/index.php?id=3003305 (last accessed 31 October 2022). 
%Z The standard brass band version can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BjdaMGaVLs (last accessed 31 October 2022). See also associated literature and poems at the Durham Mining Museum: http://www.dmm.org.uk/pitwork/html/rlgresf.htm (last accessed 31 October 2022). 
%Z Our thanks to Hiroki Shin at Queens University Belfast for discussions on the history of museum exhibits on energy, and how they have developed during the twentieth century.
%Z See especially essays by Robert Bud and Tim Boon in Morris, P (ed), Science for the Nation: Perspectives on the History of the Science Museum (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
%I The Science Museum Group
%@ 2054-5770
%B eng
%U https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/energising-connections-in-museum-collections/
%J Science Museum Group Journal