RESEARCH & PUBLIC HISTORY

2016–2017 REPORT ANNUAL 1 CONTENTS

TITLE AUTHOR PAGE

Foreword Tilly Blyth 4

Enabling A Research Culture: The Work Of The SMG Research Department Tim Boon 5

Sound And Vision: The Second SMG Research Conference Michael Terwey 6

Conferences And Events Across The Year 8

Evolution Of The Museum Workshop Sandra Kemp 10

SMG Journal: Report On Progress 2016–2017 Kate Steiner 12

SMG’s Doctoral Scheme: Five Years On Bergit Arends 14

Oramics: A Practice-Led Investigation Of An Electronic Musical Instrument Tom Richards 16

Germ Consciousness In Britain’s Workplaces Laura Newman 18

Use And Misuses Of Chemicals In The British Home, 1930s–1980s Cat Rushmore 19

Modern Physics In The Museum: What Can Objects Tell Us? Alison Boyle 20

A New History Of Applied Science Robert Bud 22

Metropolitan Science: New Insights On Early Modern London’s Rebekah Higgitt 24 Institutions And Cultures Of Practice And Knowlegde

Bradford’s National Museum: Connecting Bradford Lynn Wray 26 With The National Science And Media Museum

Energy In Store: What Our Collections Mean To Those Who Care Elizabeth Haines, Jessica 28 Bradford, Jack Kirby and Anna Woodham

National Science And Media Museum Research Highlights, 2016–2017 Michael Terwey 32

Research And Public History At The National Railway Museum 2016–2017 Ed Bartholomew and Oli Betts 34

Museum Of Science And Industry Research Highlights, 2016–2017 Georgina Young 36

What Science Capital Means: Learning Research Across SMG Karen Davies and Jane Rayner 38

Wellcome Trust Secondment Fellowship Scheme Tim Boon 42

Research Projects At The Science Museum Archives Beata Bradford 44

SMG Publications And Presentations, Academic Year 2016–2017 46

Our Students 50

Opportunities To Study And Research With Us Tim Boon 54 Cover: Medical Research in a sound-proof room. This photograph, Our Team 56 from NSMM’s Daily Herald Archive is emblematic of our Bradford Museum’s new emphasis on sound as well as vision, a feature also of our annual research conference. FOREWORD ENABLING A RESEARCH CULTURE:

TILLY BLYTH THE WORK OF THE SCIENCE MUSEUM GROUP Head of Collections and Principal Curator RESEARCH DEPARTMENT

TIM BOON Head of Research and Public History

Welcome to our third Research Annual Our collaborative doctoral Research is often a long-term we have grown a network of heritage organisations and Report, covering the academic year programme now features a regular business. This is obviously the case participants and publics who now universities. In a similar way the 2016–2017. This year sees the Science crop of graduations, and so it is a when we want to apply funded see the Science Museum Group Science Museum Group Journal Museum Group’s research hitting its great pleasure for us to be able to academic research in a linear ‘R&D’ as an organisation that does continues to grow, experimenting stride across the breadth of our feature reports from our alumni, model to the narratives and content interesting things in music. in forms as it benefits from – and activity and our museums in London, this year from students studying of galleries and exhibitions. Here the contributes to – SMG’s wider This approach represents a model Bradford, Manchester and York. electronic music, germ culture and cycle of project conception, grant community of curators and scholars. for how to develop research activity chemicals in the home. Bergit Arends application, consideration and Our academic conferences and in a way that is appropriate to a public It feels appropriate at this stage of provides a retrospective of the (where funded) execution of the workshops are really putting us organisation: producing public outputs SMG’s research journey actively to programme’s first five years and you research will generally take several on the map. The complete list we as it organically pursues its research combine the forward-looking and will also find listings of all the doctoral years. That is an anticipatory sense: feature within is testament to the questions, creating a public for the retrospective perspectives to develop projects under way, funded by the Arts we are always having to ask ourselves, range of topics where we have found galleries and exhibitions that will what we do. During the composition and Humanities Research Council and what must we do now so that research common cause with colleagues in ultimately be created drawing on its of this report we have been developing co-supervised by our university friends will be beneficial in the future. But the universities and other museums, findings. It is a model that we will be a new SMG Research Strategy which and colleagues. The Wellcome Trust is there is also a retrospective sense: from robot futures and architectural applying in new areas as we look aims to do just that; I will report on generously funding secondments for to look back on the work we have Brutalism to the challenges of forward to the new displays that will that in the next issue. its postdocs and doctoral students to done, often opportunistically, and representing the trauma of World War grace the Group’s museums in the work in SMG Museums, and the first of to see how it has organically grown One. The second Annual Research decade from 2020. these made significant contributions into something of value. Conference was held at the National to two exhibitions in the year under The projects and activities that Science and Media Museum last Our work on sound and music is review. This year also saw the beginning feature in this third annual report November (strictly beyond the a good case in point. When the of three significant research projects: may be seen in the light of this framing reporting year, but of it). Here, in Science Museum programmed of the National Science and Media of the long gestation of research. addition to staff and students talking a live performance of Brian Eno’s Museum’s potential audiences; of Our conferences and workshops are about their current research, we had music for Apollo – to mark the Moon science in early-modern London, intended to bring together people with a special theme of ‘sound and vision’, landing’s 40th anniversary in 2009 – and; knowledge exchange on SMG’s interests in particular areas, whether which allowed the museum to show we did not know that this would be energy collections. that be our research community off its new subject focus and to look the root of an enterprise that, eight finding common ground away from towards major permanent galleries. At the same time, Robert Bud’s project years later, would be feeding into their ‘day jobs’ in their research on the meaning of applied science is our thinking about not only a interests or, for example, historians reaching maturity, so we have included temporary exhibition on science, of museums delighting in the similar a progress report here. technology and music under histories of museums of science and development at our museum in Virtually all our research activities are of ethnography at the Evolution of Manchester, but also permanent carried-out in collaboration – with Museums workshop. galleries on sound and vision at other museums and with university the National Science and Media Equally, the selection of collaborative colleagues. If you’d like to join in, then Museum in Bradford. Along the way doctoral projects under our AHRC please get in touch (contact details at there have been several more concerts funding demonstrates development the end); we’d love to hear from you. exploring the relationships of music as we have learned and applied and technology, an exhibition and reflection on the kinds of project book of essays on electronic music, that best benefit the students and a research network, a conference, the museums and archives in our two doctorates, a special issue of an CDP consortium, not to mention the academic journal and a special section broader community of those studying of our own journal. All along the way, and supervising CDP projects across

4 5 SOUND AND VISION: THE SECOND SMG RESEARCH CONFERENCE

MICHAEL TERWEY Head of Collections and Exhibitions, National Science and Media Museum

To mark the rebranding and renaming University of Leicester on the new of a focus on objects and collections of the National Science and Media challenges for museums in the post- in the presentations from Bob Gwynne Museum, the 2017 Science Museum digital age. We were also treated to from the National Railway Museum Group Research Conference explored a talk on the audio interfaces and and Alice Cliff from the Museum the theme of ‘Sound and Vision in transport collections held by the of Science and Industry, and the Science Museums’. It was the second Museum of Portable Sound from the audience were delighted and annual Research Conference and joint winner of the Science Museum entertained by clips from the rich showcased work from across the Group Journal Writing Prize 2017, and varied film archives at the National Science Museum Group, our partners John Kannenberg. Railway Museum on which Angélique and our collaborators in institutions Bonamy gave an overview. Objects Other papers reflected the diverse of higher education. and collections were highlighted in and expanding culture of research presentations given by Ian Christie A strand of the conference explored across the Science Museum Group, of Birkbeck, University of London, sound in museums, reflecting the new with a series of presentations by who gave an object talk on one of the focus of the National Science and members of Group staff on subjects stars of our collection, Robert Paul’s Media Museum on image and sound relating to the history and practice Theatrograph, and James Mooney, technologies. James Mansell from the of the Group and our collections. who gave delegates the chance to University of Nottingham opened the Tim Boon spoke about scripting the view objects from the Science conference with a thought-provoking post-war Science Museum, and Cate Museum’s Hugh Davies collection. presentation on the different ways Watson gave a fascinating talk about of hearing in museums, and Alcina the earliest permanent displays in the Research in the Science Museum Cortez from the New University of Science Museum. More contemporary Group is not confined to our curatorial Lisbon shared her research on the museum practice was discussed in teams, but is also being undertaken presentation of music in museums. presentations given by Antonio Benitez in other departments, and the Other speakers in this strand included on the Hooked on Music project at the conference heard lightning talks James Mooney from the University of Manchester Science Festival, and into aspects of museum practice Leeds on practice, use and modification Emma Stirling-Middleton on sound from members of the Conservation Live debate: Fake News on Trial. of objects of sound and music, and and vision in the Science Museum’s and Learning teams at the National To mark the rebranding and renaming During the conference there was The 2018 Research Conference will Stefania Zardini Lacedelli from the new Medicine Galleries. There was more Science and Media Museum. of the National Science and Media also a range of other performances take place at the Science Museum in Museum, the 2017 Science Museum and activities for delegates to enjoy. London from 14 to 17 September. It will Group Research Conference explored John Ellis from Royal Holloway, be part of the biennial conference of the theme of ‘Sound and Vision in University of London, and his team the European Society for the History Science Museums’. It was the second of retired television engineers from of Science, and will be organised in annual Research Conference and the ADAPT project, set up and collaboration with the British Society showcased work from across the demonstrated the technology of for the History of Science, with the Science Museum Group, our partners a 1960s live television broadcast in active collaboration of the Department and our collaborators in institutions the museum foyer. Following a round- of Science and Technology Studies of higher education. table discussion on the curating of at University College London. It will exhibitions on contemporary and be a further opportunity to build on There were further insights too challenging topics, delegates were the success of this year’s conference, into the work of our cohort of invited to a reception for the opening and showcase the richness, depth and collaborative doctoral students, of the museum’s Fake News exhibition. diversity of the expanding research with papers and contributions During the evening there was a unique culture of the Science Museum Group. from Rebecca Smith, Paul Coleman and special performance from the and Phillip Roberts who, as well as artist Sam Hertz, in collaboration with a paper on his research into the the Dare Partnership between the collections at the National Science University of Leeds and Opera North, and Media Museum also gave an whose installation Shadow Feeling entertaining magic lantern allowed us to experience the sounds performance that brought the and resonances of the museum building objects and their histories to life. itself, as pink noise was played through the IMAX auditorium’s sound system.

Three-dimensional electricity demand chart, c.1954.

6 7 CONFERENCES ACROSS THE YEAR

DATE TITLE DESCRIPTION 19 January 2017 The Wonders and In exploring the many dimensions of human space flight, this two-day Challenges of Human event focused on the culinary, ethical, medical, psychological, and Space Flight sensory affects of space on humans. It heard from psychologists who advised NASA; from doctors preparing astronauts for missions on the International Space Station; and from chefs and food technologists 2–4 October 2016 Artefacts Understanding Use: Science and Technology Objects and Users about crafting food to enjoy in space. Philosophers and neuroscientists spoke about the changes that occur in the mind and the body of The Artefacts conferences have for two decades been bringing astronauts as they gaze at earth from orbit. The workshop considered together museum curators and university researchers from across the challenges of spending years in space on a future Mars mission, and the world to discuss the histories of scientific and technical objects whether a one-way mission to Mars would be ethically acceptable. and their place in museums. The conferences aim to stimulate far- reaching and in-depth research on the material culture of science. Every year has a theme; in 2017 it was Understanding Use. Conference 27 January 2017 Concrete Brutalism Evening event organised by Royal Holloway Department of Geography speakers extended to the museum context the ‘users’ theme that has under the title, ‘Brutalism Redux: Resuscitating the urban politics featured in Science and Technology Studies over the last decade or so, of brutalist architecture’, an event associated with a potential future showing how it can open-up new approaches to objects and display. exhibition on concrete. (This conference was described in last year’s Annual Report). 5 April 2017 Humphrey Davy workshop Free public talk and workshop at the Science Museum 20 October 2016 The Wounded Workshop with ‘Wounded’ exhibition feedback group Letters and the Lamp: Sir Humphry Davy, 1778–1829 In 1815, Sir Humphry Davy invented a miners’ safety lamp that later 28 October 2016 Manchester Science ‘The Building and Operation of Industrial Museums’ is a silent film made revolutionised coal mining in Britain, Europe, and beyond. The safety Festival performance of in 1928 as part of a campaign to build a science museum in New York. lamp was a source of controversy, however; others laid claim to its new score for ‘The Building The composer Jean-Philippe Calvin wrote a new score for the film under invention, and a bitter public dispute ensued. In this talk, Professor and Operation of Industrial a Leverhulme Trust artist in residence award in 2016. The film shows Sharon Ruston (Lancaster University) explored some of Davy’s private Museums’ Europe’s four great science museums in London, Paris, Munich and letters, the majority of which will be published for the very first time Vienna as they were in 1927. On 28 October, Manchester Science in 2018. After the talk there was a more informal workshop over Festival hosted the first festival performance (the premiere was at refreshments, run by Dr Andrew Lacey (Lancaster University), the Artefacts conference ten days beforee). to discuss some of the issues raised in Davy’s letters. 3 November 2016 ABTEM Annual Conference The Association of British Transport & Engineering Museums, a non- 16–17 June 2017 Metropolitan gallery London 1600–1800: Communities of Natural Knowledge profit-making group, exists to provide a forum for the discussion of workshop and Artificial Practice matters of common interest to transport and engineering museums and to provide a means of representing their views on issues of See report: this issue national and regional concern. 14–15 July 2017 Evolution of the museum Universal Histories: Universal Museums 19 November 2016 Concrete Hopes and Fears As part of the AHRC’s 2016 ‘Being Human’ Festival of the Humanities, the Science Museum held an event under the title ‘Concrete Hopes See report: this issue and Fears’, which explored whether the material should be seen as ‘friend’ or ‘foe’. Architectural modernists have gloried in concrete’s 8 August 2017 Robot Futures: Vision and Robot Futures: Vision and Touch in Robotics Touch in Robotics capacity to enable new structures such as Lubetkin’s cheerful penguin This symposium brought together engineers, scientists, cultural pool at London Zoo or the domineering swagger of Erno Goldfinger’s theorists and artists who work in the field of robotics to explore notions Trellick Tower. But the totalitarian aesthetic of brutalism-by-concrete of embodiment, telepresence and virtual and augmented realities. has divided opinion in places such as London’s South Bank. Disasters such as that at Ronan Point in 1968, or the Bison system’s failures, have 31 August 2017 Post Office conference ‘The British Post Office in the Telecommunications Era’ conference piled unease on top of dislike. An event associated with a potential was organised by our own CDP students. It explored many future exhibition on concrete. different and surprising sides of the British Post Office during the telecommunications era (1870–1975). Talks ranged from its takeover of the UK’s telegraph network to the privatization of British Telecoms. Papers covered four themes; Gender, Serving the Nation and Empire, Network and Military, in which historians from a range of disciplines and backgrounds came together to illustrate the vital but often unacknowledged roles that this institution played in twentieth century society. A final round table featured Professor Graeme Gooday, University of Leeds, and John Liffen, Curator of Communications, concluding the day of presentations.

8 9 EVOLUTION OF THE MUSEUM WORKSHOP

SANDRA KEMP Ruskin Library and Research Centre, Lancaster University

Today’s museums are defined by the research project (universalhistories. in London and highlighted the Far left: Handbook of the collections they hold. Researching org) led by Sandra Kemp and Hervé development of scientific disciplines. Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus, one of the project the origins of these collections Inglebert, and funded through the This collection contributed to the case study exhibitions. enables curators and historians to AHRC’s Care for the Future and the separation of the SKM’s collections Left: The Indian Palace in the Champs appreciate their meanings and LABEX Pasts in the Present: History, into science and art, and ultimately de Mars during the 1878 International to build deeper understanding of Heritage, Memory schemes, in the UK led to the emergence of two different Exhibition, ‘L’Exposition Universelle 1878. Lettre illustrée’, Paris-Gravé, their potential for display and for and France respectively. The project institutions, the V&A and the Science 1878, p21. new lines of research. The Evolution is a partnership between museums Museum. The second UHUM project Below left: Tim Boon demonstrates of the Museum workshop on 13–14 July and universities: the V&A, Science case study was the Universal the pyrophone (fire organ), one of 2017 combined collections-based and Museum, Pitt Rivers Museum, Musée Exposition at the Musée d’Ethnographie the objects from the 1876 Special archival study at Blythe House and de l’Homme, Musée du quai Branly, du Trocadéro in 1878. The Musée Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus. This international round-table presentations, debate Musée des Arts et Métiers and the d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro first meeting featured simultaneous and discussion at the Dana Research universities of Lancaster and Paris opened its doors in 1882, building translation from and into French. Centre to explore how understanding Ouest Nanterre La Défense. on a series of older ethnographic complex interrelations between collections, some of which date Sandra Kemp (project Principal knowledge histories and museum back to the prerevolutionary period. Investigator) opened the workshop histories might inform future The workshop methodology was with an introduction to two of the museum developments. underpinned by transnational UHUM project case studies. The first Tim Boon (Head of Research and the 19th century until today. Alexander new rationales to suggest new kinds comparison of the history of the This workshop was the first of of these was the 1876 International Public History, Science Museum) led Scott (University of Wales Trinity St of comprehensive histories. Hervé development of museum collection four interrelated events in London Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus the collections-based presentations, David) and Jonathan King (Museum Inglebert acted as rapporteur, and display practices, and their and Paris from the Universal at the South Kensington Museum showing some of the objects that of Archaeology and Anthropology, bringing together the key threads reception in London and Paris between Histories and Universal Museums: (SKM), which marked the growth were loaned to the SKM in 1876 for Cambridge) discussed the impact weaving together the narratives of 1851 and 1914. A Transnational Comparison (UHUM) of interest for a science collection the collection of scientific apparatus, of the 1851 Universal Exhibition on UHUM over the two days. The workshop including objects relating to the Liverpool museums, and of exhibition concluded with a work-in-progress standardisation of weights and temporary buildings on museum presentation of the UHUM online lengths, as well as pitch, tone and architecture. Roberto Limentani exhibition, prepared from research by metre. Christopher Marsden (Senior (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, team members across the project, Archivist, V&A) showed material – École des Hautes Études en Sciences by Chiara Zuanni. including a range of stunning Sociales) explored the theoretical This workshop acted as a foundation photographic albums – documenting background of Pitt Rivers’ approach for two subsequent workshops in the construction of the SKM and to ethnology and museology. Paris which further developed our its early exhibitions. Sandra Kemp understanding of the ways in which and Chiara Zuanni (UHUM project André Delpuech (Director, Musée de histories are assembled and postdoctoral researcher) looked l’Homme) led discussion on French transformed through objects in at an Indian writing desk, which was museum histories, starting with the museums. The first, Comparative donated to the Prince of Wales during history of the Musée d’Ethnographie Museologies: The Example of the his travels across India in 1875–76 du Trocadéro. Pascal Riviale (Archives Asian Arts, held in Musée de l’Homme and was subsequently displayed nationales), Séverine Dessajan on 27 September 2017, explored the in both London and Paris. All three (Université Paris Descartes) and acquisition, inventory and display of sessions allowed participants to Magdalena Ruiz Marmolejo (Sorbonne) Asian objects in Western museums. reflect on a range of theoretical explored early Trocadéro collections, The second, Museum Universalities frameworks and methodologies for focusing respectively on Peruvian in Western Cultural Capitals in the researching the history of an object collections, approaches to display Nineteenth and Early Twentieth and its provenance. of ethnography and Amazonian collections. Déborah Dubald (European Centuries, held at Université de Paris Following the collections-based University Institute) drew our attention Ouest Nanterre La Défense, extended activities, round-table presentations to the multiple entanglements of this investigation to museums investigated different aspects of internationally. Our final project collections, stakeholders and buildings collecting and display practices at conference will be held at the Musée that shaped the Natural History the case study exhibitions, and related des Arts et Métiers in Paris on 15–16 Museum in Lyon. transnational exhibitions to museums. June 2018. This will extend the debate Contributors from the UK centred on A short tour of the Making the Modern on historical definitions of ‘universal’ the impact of universal exhibitions World gallery in the Science Museum histories and ‘universal’ museums on the SKM. Rupert Cole (Assistant focused attention again on the ways in to the present day, bringing together Curator, Science Museum) began by which histories are accumulated the core themes of the project. tracing the history of the displays of and transformed through objects Nairne electrostatic machines from in museums and by their reuse under

10 11 SCIENCE MUSEUM GROUP JOURNAL: REPORT ON PROGRESS, 2016–2017

KATE STEINER Editor, Science Museum Group Journal

Since the last Annual Report, we Terwey) and a historical study 2018 (see below) is starting to create their experience of experimenting The journal’s Editorial Board, University of London. Trentmann have produced two issues of the starting from the museum’s magic a bottleneck. Submissions are having with museum practice at the turn with several new members, met is interested in the intersection Science Museum Group Journal. lantern collection (Phillip Robertss). to be held over for as long as 18 months of this century. We think the results in May 2017 and continued to of histories of energy use alongside Issue 07 (spring 2017) had the theme The theme also demonstrated the to two years – a common practice show promise and are working with show its active support and offer its material culture as collected and ‘Sound and Vision’ and was published relevance to our practice of work in paper journals, but not ideal for our technical contractors to present constructive advice. This year we displayed in museums, and this issue to coincide with the relaunch of the by external scholars from disparate an online journal with the potential these mini-collections more elegantly held a panel of board members reflects these two areas of research National Science and Media Museum. disciplines – from the study of sound to turn around articles in two to three within the e-journal’s information (Simon Schaffer, Sam Alberti and practice. In addition we are looking Issue 08 (autumn 2017) was an in museums (Jennifer Rich, James months. This could be seen as a architecture. Collections of papers and Helen Graham) speaking to at a future expansion and relaunch of extra-large issue and included Mansell) to issues around the collection pleasant problem to have as it is, from the Sensing Time workshop with an audience of around 50 invited the journal, most probably to coincide a mini-collection of articles all and display of photography (Elizabeth in part, a feature of the journal’s the V&A and from the forthcoming staff and guests, with the aim of with its five-year anniversary. addressing experiments in museum Edwards, Ben Burbridge). The collection success. (It is also interesting to Wounded workshop organised by making this rich source of knowledge practice at the turn of the present illustrates both the expansion of note a trend in the field of academic our medical curators are both in the and expertise more widely available. century. These issues highlight academic work and thinking across publishing in which authors are planning stages. The e-journal continues to seek some interesting developments the Group, and our ability to publish favouring the special journal issue Alongside the increase of external to be flexible and innovative. around the e-journal’s growth and our own work alongside that of the over books of collected essays.) submissions (Charlotte Sleigh on This year we appointed Geoffrey future direction. scholarly community. While we want to continue publishing science fiction and literature, and Belknap (Curator of Photography related articles together, our editorial Themed issues can be powerful; the Yet issue 07 also illustrated some Goggins et al. from National Museums at Bradford) to the role of Reviews response is to experiment more with collection of articles addressing interesting conundrums. The increased Scotland on the display of prosthetics Editor. His brief was to revivify the themed sections of the journal – mini- related issues creates greater focus profile of the e-journal externally are examples), submissions from staff reviews section, and he began in collections of related articles which and impact – a whole that is greater and the growing pressure to publish across the Group are also increasing. issue 08 with an article challenging speak to each other, but allow than the sum of the parts. In the case out of internal research activity Bradford and Manchester have been the idea of what reviews mean for publication of unrelated articles of the ‘Sound and Vision’ issue, the (conferences, fellowships, maturing particularly productive this year, for a contemporary online journal. at the same time. theme allowed publication by internal collaborative doctoral research) example (Jan Hicks, Alice Cliff and staff and students at the National has resulted in a great number of This was the solution for issue 08 in Sarah Baines from the Museum of Science and Media Museum who submissions generally, and themed which a group of museum directors Science and Industry and Zoe addressed, for example, issues of issues block the pipeline. The addition and senior curators (gathered Wolstenholme from the National From Prosthetic limbs on display: from maker to user, by Sophie museum policy and strategy (Michael of a planned themed issue for spring together by Robert Bud) discuss Science and Media Museum are all Goggins et al (Issue 08) in the process of publication). Curators are increasingly seeing publication of their work as a natural output and show greater confidence in submitting – among them Stewart Emmens, Sara Stradal, Emma Middleton and Elizabeth Bruton. Collaborative doctoral students’ research and fellowships such as those supported by Wellcome are rich sources of articles on our practice and collections. We will continue to work to encourage and support staff from different sites and areas of work to submit articles.

In 2016/17 we also awarded the

e-journal’s first annual Writing Prize.

The £500 prize was shared by John

Kannenberg – who wrote a

theoretically grounded piece on how

museums could treat sounds as objects

– and Joshua Butt, a collaborative

doctoral award student who wrote a

detailed study from the archives of a

Manchester coach-building company

adapting to the age of the motorcar.

Both articles, along with a highly Next steps include the production commended piece by Jean-François From ‘A Chamber of Noise Horrors’: of issue 09, which is guest-edited Fava-Verde, were published in issue 08. sound, technology and the museum, by Frank Trentmann of Birkbeck, by James Mansell (Issue 07).

12 13 THE SCIENCE MUSEUM GROUP’S DOCTORAL SCHEME: FIVE YEARS ON

BERGIT ARENDS Acting Manager, Research and Public History

The arts and humanities research through collections held at the Science together with experts in collections How does the programme support the landscape is changing significantly Museum Group and other archives. management, digitisation and employability of the doctoral student? and the Science Museum Group’s Historians of science and technology audience thinking. Doctoral students Students concluding their research research landscape with it. and one of our archivists support the access distinct but complementary or who were awarded their doctorates Relationship-building between study of models and demonstration research environments and benefit this year make headway in their the museum sector and academe equipment of Manchester’s Museum from a diversity of approaches with research careers. Jacob Ward has is the essence of this change. At its of Science and Industry and the role an applied translational dimension. taken up the Douglas Byrne Marconi heart is the collaborative doctoral these play in technical education, In turn the museums get injections Fellowship at the Bodleian Library, partnership scheme. The scheme as well as their role as icons of both of new thinking from both students Oxford, to continue his research gives academic researchers industrial heritage and symbols of and the university researchers. into the British Post Office in the meaningful and structured access technological futures. This gives us an opportunity to telecommunications era. Laura to our collections and our expertise. open up silent collections through Newman was appointed Research These and other collaborative the dedicated work of the students. Fellow on the Mobile Museum project The change started ten years ago doctoral research projects have been at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, when museums were recognised not supported by the Science Museum Sophie Vohra, based at the National to study the mobility of biocultural only as a public sphere for learning Group and have been funded by the Railway Museum and University of collections. Following his research but for what they are at their core: AHRC through the partnership scheme York, works on the Trevithick archive at the National Railway Museum, centres of knowledge production and since 2013. The scheme builds on at the museum and assists with Thomas Spain became a member research. The driver of this change a legacy of postgraduate research the recataloguing of the material of staff there. Ben Regel continues and its key funder is the Arts and within the Group, but this research as part of her project Railways to work in the Science Museum’s Humanities Research Council (AHRC). has now become more structured and Commemoration: Anniversaries, conservation department while The council started to appreciate the and relevant to us. To further extend Commemorative Cultures and the finishing his thesis. We are excited myriad opportunities to undertake our network within the science Making of Railway History. Gemma about the career paths our students research within the museum’s four heritage sector we are currently part Almond, from the University of take and look towards developing walls. As a consequence, a number of of the Science Museums and Archives Swansea, investigates a hitherto close ties with our research students museums, but also galleries, libraries, Consortium (SMAC), comprising the little-studied collection: the Science to facilitate careers in both the archives and heritage bodies, became Science Museum Group, BT Archives, Museum’s collection of 19th-century museum sector and within universities. entitled to become designated as Royal Geographical Society (with the spectacles. Through these objects Independent Research Organisations Institute of British Geographers) and she contributes to a nascent material- (IROs). The Science Museum Group the Royal Society. The SMAC funding medical history of human prosthetics. was one of them, becoming an IRO phase started in 2016, with annual Gemma contributed her collections in 2009. With this status the Group funds for six studentships per year knowledge to our review as part became fundable and we have since confirmed until and including 2019. of preliminary work for the One increased our research activities. Facilitated by the programme, each Collection project. Here I look back on the past five collaborative studentship is jointly Not only do we get to know our years of our collaborations with proposed by a university-based collections better, but these research higher education institutions to academic in collaboration with projects also establish links of long- support doctoral-level research. a member of staff at the SMAC. term benefit for both collaborating Doctoral candidates are then jointly Our doctoral research projects delve partners to provide access to supervised by subject specialists at into unsung collections, exhibition- resources and materials – knowledge both their higher education institution making and audience thinking, and expertise that might not otherwise and at one or more of the institutions and develop new methodologies have been available. Moreover, our of the SMAC. Through the programme to study our collections’ material doctoral researchers promote the we are taking the lead in developing culture, and their social and museums beyond their walls. Several a distinctive area of research into technological histories. Research of our students were successful science heritage collections and methods extend across the sciences in bringing their research into an building a highly skilled cohort of and humanities. Current projects international context through the doctoral researchers. include research into science, AHRC international placement scheme. Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD student Benjamin Regel technology and road safety in the The scheme provides an exceptional Josh Butt (Manchester Metropolitan worked on the conservation of doped fabric aircraft. motor age in Britain during the 1960s opportunity for mutual learning. University) became joint winner of the and 1970s through collections held at The university researchers get Science Museum Group Journal Writing the Science Museum. Another project to work with unique, world-leading Prize with his essay ‘Adapting to the investigates different healthcare collections, alongside their emergence of the automobile: a case campaigns on cures for nervous counterparts at our museums – study of Manchester coachbuilder disorders, the benefits of tuberculosis experts who bring years of specialist Joseph Cockshoot and Co. 1896–1939’. screening and the importance of collections knowledge and an sexual health in 20th-century Britain approach to material culture, 14 15 RECENTLY COMPLETED DOCTORAL PROJECT: ORAMICS, A PRACTICE-LED INVESTIGATION OF AN ELECTRONIC MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

TOM RICHARDS Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD student

Left: Daphne Oram giving a presentation at East Surrey College, Redhill, in 1980. Image courtesy of the Daphne Oram Archive, ref. ORAM/07/05/001. Right: Oram with her Oramics interface, about 1969. Image courtesy of the Daphne Oram Archive, ref. ORAM/07/09/013. Far right: Mini Oramics reimagined and built in 2016. Image courtesy of the author.

Daphne Oram (1925–2003) was a becoming co-founder of the BBC might supersede the techniques first prototype, it became apparent have been received had it been with the interface and found it to British composer and innovator Radiophonic Workshop. Oram had of tape manipulation and provide that despite some beautiful design brought to market. How might this be a unique composition experience, whose work and research had been produced most of the experimental the composer with a more intuitive work and real innovation (winning US unusual interface have changed the both in the working method and the all but written out of history, despite soundtracks that gave rise to the interface, where all the parameters and UK patents) the Oramics machine course of 1970s electronic music? sounds produced. Despite it having her former status as a leader of the launch of the facility, and yet even of the music could be graphically was dogged by technical difficulties. a few minor technical issues, they all fledgling UK electronic music avant- as this legendary studio was born, represented and controlled. In 1962 This problem was exacerbated by Rather than building Mini Oramics found it to be a very direct and garde from the late 1950s to the Oram had reservations about staying Oram received a grant of £3500 the fact that by the end of 1966 Oram exactly to the Oram–Emmett design, intuitive working process. Since then mid-1970s. More recently researchers with the BBC. She was particularly from the Calouste Gulbenkian had parted professional company I assessed the design for potential the project has attracted worldwide such as Jo Langton, Tim Boon, Peter unhappy that she did not receive Foundation to pursue this research, with John Oram and Graham Wrench. flaws or problems, and eventually attention, featuring on BBC Radio 4, in Manning and Mick Grierson have named credit for her works: she was and with the help of several talented Undeterred and without further redesigned and built it to slightly The Wire magazine and at Moogfest in brought her legacy once more to the classed as a technician rather than engineers – Fred Wood, Graham funding, Oram started work on a revised specifications. Essentially, the US, as well as several conferences, fore, with the Oramics to Electronica a composer. She also resented the fact Wrench and her brother John Oram – successor: ‘Mini Oramics’, which she I imagined that I was a 1970s product festivals and symposiums. exhibition at the Science Museum and that her exacting specifications for she built this hybrid optoelectronic was planning from the early 1970s developer bringing Oram’s idea to I hope this practice-based research the accession of her archive into the this new studio had been completely instrument. In 1966 Oram successfully with the advent of integrated circuit market. I used only circuit topologies can, to an extent, vindicate Oram’s Goldsmiths library special collections. ignored by the management and she demonstrated her drawn-sound technologies. An almost complete that would have been feasible at the ideas. Oramics has often been I was lucky enough to be the recipient considered the initial equipment interface, which she dubbed ‘Oramics’. design for her unfinished Mini Oramics time, and I tried to make a machine compared with much more recent of a collaborative doctoral award provision to be inadequate. She also Machine exists in the archive – and As my studentship specified practice- that would work to Oram’s conceptual software-based composition systems. PhD studentship, working between expressed regret that there were this design, credited to Daphne Oram based research, I not only closely specifications, rather than something When compared to its potential 1970s Goldsmiths and the Science Museum, no opportunities for pure musical and John Emmett, became the basis studied the Oramics Machine which that included the minor flaws of the competitors, Mini Oramics really could to further research and contextualise research. So in December 1958, of my PhD research project. was by now the centrepiece of the original design. have provided a valuable alternative Oram’s work, with the specific remit of with increasingly frequent requests Science Museum exhibition, but As no working Oramics interface technique for the electronic music examining her musical innovations: the to undertake external commissions, At the end of March 2016, I finally started to look at ways that I might existed, I thought evaluating and practitioner, if only Oram had secured Oramics drawn-sound interfaces. she left the BBC to launch a private finished the prototype, and then be able to expand upon the existing attempting to build this unfinished the further backing she needed, and studio in Kent. conducted a small user study to Oram cut her teeth at the BBC between knowledge of Oram’s work by creating design of Oram’s might provide insight evaluate the interface. The feedback that she arguably deserved. 1944 and 1958. Starting out in a junior In her latter years at the BBC, Oram something new. When I studied Oram’s into its feasibility, the quality of the from four professional electronic technical role, she progressed to had been researching a new way to detailed notes of the trials and interface and more widely help to musicians was overwhelmingly become a studio manager, before create electronic music, one that tribulations of her work with her speculate how Mini Oramics would positive. They all enjoyed working

16 17 RECENTLY COMPLETED DOCTORAL PROJECT: RECENTLY COMPLETED DOCTORAL PROJECT: GERM CONSCIOUSNESS USES AND MISUSES OF CHEMICALS IN BRITAIN’S WORKPLACES IN THE BRITISH HOME, 1930s–1980s

LAURA NEWMAN CAT RUSHMORE Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD student Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD student

My PhD looks at how British workers agricultural colleges, for example, that gloves deadened their sense of responded to attempts to create we can begin to see how workers touch and made them more likely to new germ-conscious workplaces in were taught about germs. Stressing make serious and life-threatening late-19th- and early-20th-century their familiar characteristics and mistakes in the operating theatre. Britain. Approaching this project, it applicability to working lives was key. Tuberculous post office employees would be natural to assume that fear And it was not all about disease control refused to clean their cutlery because was the overwhelming reaction that – in the case of the butter and cheese it was ‘women’s work’. Dairy farmers most people had. Today we are industry, many were quick to try and were unable to wash their hands surrounded by images and testimonies emphasise how germs could be useful regularly because it was too expensive that stress the ubiquitous dangers working tools for fermenting cream. to install hot water into their sheds and of disease germs. At the forefront of such attempts were besides, they argued, there were other a combination of activists, government ways of ensuring that milk reached the One of the aims of this project was agents and businesses, all of whom had customer clean and free of disease. to trace the lineage of the kinds of an interest in teaching workers to be behaviours we associate today with What results is an occupational more germ conscious. being germ conscious. How quickly health history that centres the did Victorian and Edwardian workers Despite the often concerted attention mundane realities of working with incorporate techniques such as that was devoted to teaching people germs. Rather than treating germs hand-washing into their daily regimens? about bacteria and infection control, as exceptional and otherworldly What kind of new technologies did they one of the most surprising things my objects, germs were instead often adopt in light of new concerns about research revealed was just how laissez interpreted through the everyday, controlling infection in the workplace? faire many people’s responses were to with a clear and tangible relationship Domestic ceramic container And how did they learn about germs in the threat of germs in the workplace. with workers and their workplaces. for bicarbonate of soda. the first place? By using the operating Scientific authority and expertise This helps us to further broaden our theatre and hospital, the post office derived from the bacteriological understanding of one of the most and the dairy as case studies, we can laboratory had no assured or secure important chapters in the history begin to gain some insight into how place here; from the operating theatre of medicine to include new kinds of In January 2017, I successfully chemicals at home, I supplemented collected and therefore available and why germs now assume such to the dairy shed, many mounted actors and environments that were defended my thesis at Oxford Brookes domestic advice literature, personal for research than those associated a critical space in many everyday criticisms of this (relatively) new impacted through the ‘discovery’ University. As a project supported by accounts and published articles with with the cleaning chemicals I chose working lives. branch of science. Surgeons argued of minute life. the AHRC and the Science Museum, archived materials, including the trade to study. Evidence of unbranded my research was partly inspired by literature collection at the Museum chemicals was not always immediately One of the key arguments of my the presence and absence of everyday of Science and Industry which holds obvious, but it was present in storage thesis is that we need to understand domestically used chemicals in training manuals for Ilford’s salesmen. containers marked for sodas, for the workplace as an important site museum collections. In order to look The History of Advertising Trust and example. Jars for sodium bicarbonate of both formal and informal learning at a variety of activities in the home, the Walgreen Boots Alliance Archive (baking soda) were smaller than those in this period. By looking at the and therefore include women, men provided insights into consumer for sodium carbonate (washing soda), notebooks of medical students and children in my research, I paid practices and preferences, the which speaks of the volume used as as well as the courses offered at attention to chemicals used for three state of the market and details well as how each agent was taken out domestic activities: cleaning, weeding about individual products. At the of the jar: bicarb in teaspoonfuls, as and photography. I profiled a selection National Archives, Kew, I accessed opposed to handfuls of washing soda. of the chemicals and chemical products files that had been compiled during In these examples, the containers had used at home, and my focus on user investigations into solvent abuse, become collectable as ceramics made experiences highlighted rich sensory fire extinguishers, caustic chemicals, by particular manufacturers and details in addition to the users’ explosives and pesticide use, which belonging to larger sets of objects. practical knowledge. I quickly found revealed material submitted to By taking a broad and inclusive view that evidence of misusers was far more regulatory board meetings and their of chemical use at home, I showed prominent than evidence of ‘ordinary’ minutes, newspaper clippings and that users are central to understanding users because newspapers and scribbled reactions to them, letters why chemical products exist in medical journals often carried stories rom concerned members of the particular forms. The users in my of poisonings, explosions and caustic public and responses to them, as narrative had agency: they managed burns. I embraced these themes well as coroners’ reports. risks themselves, and sometimes they because between the 1930s and the Regarding objects in museums, circumvented the safeguards that 1980s interest in accident prevention, the issue of survival bias was clear. had been demanded on their behalf. household safety and consumer advice Products associated with hobbies Users and misusers shaped the increased markedly. and those in branded packaging products available in British homes. Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD To construct a broad picture of how were more likely to be attractive, student Laura Newman. domestic users obtained and used valued, durable, available to be

18 19 MODERN PHYSICS IN THE MUSEUM: WHAT CAN OBJECTS TELL US?

ALISON BOYLE Keeper of Science Collections

‘It has been realised for some time Different sorts of objects tell different The non-public lives of objects can that the Museum has lagged behind sorts of stories. There is the ‘icon’: also illuminate the study of physics in illustrating the development of J J Thomson’s cathode-ray tube, the via its material culture. On the trail of what is somewhat loosely termed museological manifestation of the a 23 cm crystal, we travel thousands “Modern Physics” or “The New Physics” invisible electron. Over a century at of miles through five countries, as distinct from “Classical Physics”, the Science Museum it has shifted uncovering decades-long processes and an effort is now to be made to between different collections as of planning, testing and integration: fill up this gap ... Careful consideration curators endlessly regrouped one small component of the Large has been devoted to the problem of categories to accommodate emerging Hadron Collider provides a microcosm interesting the general public in such fields of science and industry which of how ‘big science’ operates. And an abstruse subject.’ Report of the did not sit comfortably within 19th- what of objects that have sat in Advisory Council of the Science century museum classifications; museum stores for decades, never Museum for the year 1935. it has variously been interpreted as accessed? Could what museums do not an emblem of ‘pure’ research and the use tell us as much as what they do? My PhD thesis, supervised by Jon Agar foundation stone of a burgeoning at UCL, explores how modern physics There are some challenges to taking electronics industry. It is also just one was collected and displayed in the an object biography approach. When of at least three objects with a similar UK over the (long) 20th century. you choose to follow an object’s story, claim to fame, a striking illustration of The emergence and establishment you sometimes need to force yourself our need to memorialise and simplify of ‘modern physics’ roughly overlaps to stick to the path it takes you along narratives of scientific discovery. with the development of distinct rather than diverting towards other science and technology museums. Most objects are not so famous. interesting things encountered on the This provides an opportunity to In the Science Museum’s D4 hangar way. But this also takes you down some explore how collections and public at the Wroughton large-object store, unexpected paths, and I have found representations of science are shaped you will find a crate tucked neatly that studying objects and documents by a variety of factors including under the wing of the Piaggio aircraft. in tandem can add texture to the scientists’ own narratives of their The object inside is a 1949 display existing historiography, uncovering professional identities, institutional model which has not been used since some aspects that archive studies trends and state priorities. the 1970s, and is inaccurate so might alone would not reveal. I am hopeful The GLEEP reactor model (in the centre of the plinth) on display in Whitehaven, Cumbria, 1949. be considered of limited historical that these object stories, as well as Much of the existing research about Image © Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. interest. But it is its very inaccuracy adding to our picture of physics in physics on display has focused on that makes it interesting. Showing the 20th century, will show the wider major public exhibitions such as GLEEP, Britain’s first nuclear reactor, potential of the Science Museum the 1924 British Empire Exhibition it was designed to promote Britain’s Group’s collections for research. and the 1951 Festival of Britain. emerging international isotope trade, Instead, I have chosen an object while maintaining secrecy over the biography approach. Looking beyond exact nature of reactor designs (or behind) the displays allows us and experiments at Harwell’s Atomic to take a longer view away from the Energy Research Establishment particular constraints of individual (AERE). Following this commercial exhibitions, offering a glimpse into success, the AERE used the model how various publics – in museums and in a series of small exhibitions in elsewhere – encountered artefacts towns near the site of the planned of modern physics, and showing how new Windscale reactor. These were collections need to change shape as consciously planned to win hearts scientific fields shift. and minds, ‘killing all foolish talk’ of safety concerns.

Two schoolboys inspect the GLEEP model for a press shoot at the Science Museum, 1950.

20 21 A NEW HISTORY OF APPLIED SCIENCE

ROBERT BUD Research Keeper

The concept of ‘applied science’, the of the term over the last 200 years encyclopaedia. Drawing on the history of which is the current focus will be a substantial contribution to thinking of Immanuel Kant, and of my research, has been a potent the museum’s own self-awareness; of encyclopaedists in Germany, topic of debate and tool of policy it will help the institution be a more he was interested in helping the for some 200 years. It is also used ‘mindful museum’. bourgeoisie of the early 19th century in public debate about science. make sense of the rush of knowledge It links to the culture and experience The challenge has been to develop and experiences that could all too of the visitor. ‘Applied science’ an approach to the history of science easily feel like chaos. It was however is indeed a concept particularly that begins with lay and politicians’ in the university rather than the pertinent to the Science Museum. categories and to follow the encyclopaedia that the term found Reaching on the one hand into the interactions with scientists’ teaching its most influential place as, later in laboratory and towards pure science, and research. This is the opposite to the 19th century, the role of academe and on the other into the factory and a more traditional trajectory which has in educating future engineers and the home, towards the development begun with scientist’s categories and chemists was debated. The new civic of machines for production and then explored public understanding red-brick colleges, later universities, devices for living, ‘applied science’ of these. Since for a century the such as Birmingham and Manchester underpins the scope of the museum. Science Museum has itself been could provide structured teaching We may take it for granted, but there a node in public talk about science, which would be both relevant and is nothing natural about the concept this research expresses curiosity in a civilising while not trying to teach the and indeed in very recent years its domain which is natural and necessary secrets of the trade only learnable on use has faded. So, while this research to the museum, perhaps more so even the job. This was a time when Britain does not start with individual objects than to academe. was becoming increasingly aware not in the museum’s collection it explores just of the industrial competition of Left and above: Fuel Research Station the reasons behind the aggregation The term ‘applied science’ was coined Germany, but also of the cultural in Greenwich, an experimental plant of detectors of subatomic particles by the poet and philosopher Samuel underpinnings of education there. for the conversion of tar into motor spirit, 1933. with fire engines. Understanding the Taylor Coleridge in 1817 as he drew multiple resonances and meanings up proposals for a massive new

The term also had connotations which centuries the term had been used to A separate but related project in went much wider than educational express the meaning and aspiration which the museum is involved, HoNESt philosophy, as it expressed the tenets for that knowledge which stood at (History of Nuclear Energy in Society), of progress and the rootedness of the very edge of the public sphere, is concerned with the historical roots a new technological civilisation in and linked the most general to the of public attitudes to nuclear power the deepest scholarship and highest most particular. Naturally this study, across Europe. From the 1950s achievements of the past. while British in focus, has had to deal the work of the UK Atomic Energy with multiple influences between Authority expressed the visions The categories of pure and applied countries, both close neighbours and limitations of applied science science were crucial to the 1876 and transatlantic challengers. more powerfully than any other exhibition in South Kensington – huge endeavour. This project is therefore in size and ambition, if temporary – The outputs will be chapters in a closely connected with the study which launched the Science Museum. variety of volumes, articles (four have of the concept itself, as well as The 20th century saw a shift of been published and three are in press) enabling the museum to collaborate emphasis in science policy to and a dedicated volume. Part of the with European partners. The support research and once again ‘applied support from the AHRC also went of Euratom enabled the museum to science’ was deployed and enriched. into the organisation of a conference recruit a postdoctoral fellow, Dr Stuart After the Second World War the term looking beyond science itself to its Butler, who developed a report on the was very widely used, describing the links with the rest of culture in the British experience. early 20th century. For applied science research that could legitimately be The Science Museum is grateful permeated society. It was a term used supported by public funds for the for support from AHRC grants AH/ by James Joyce to characterise the public good (rather than company- I027177/1 and AH/L014815/1. interests of a character in his modernist specific interests) until it lost out to The HoNESt project has received ‘technology’ at the end of the century. novel Ulysses. In turn this meeting will funding from the Euratom research In military circles it represented the lead to the publication of a multi- and training programme 2014–18 kind of knowledge which was not author book edited together with under grant agreement no. 662268. secret (as opposed to defence scholars in a variety of fields. technology, which was). Over two

22 23 METROPOLITAN SCIENCE: NEW RESEARCH ON EARLY MODERN LONDON’S INSTITUTIONS AND CULTURES OF PRACTICE AND KNOWLEDGE

REBEKAH HIGGITT Lead, Metropolitan Science project, and Senior Lecturer in History of Science, University of Kent

of science and national prosperity as court materials and company as the company sought to process well as a clash with the Clockmakers’ court minutes reveals that even information centrally. The sense of Company over which had jurisdiction very socioeconomically marginalised the company’s public responsibilities, over mathematical instrument-makers, artisans employed languages of as the agents of a vast extraterritorial provoked by a test case concerning the expertise in describing the design, empire, increase during this time, and optical and mathematical instrument- materials and techniques associated a sense of the company’s contribution maker and retailer Robert Brettell Bate. with ‘scientific’ instruments. Fourth, to knowledge as part of its commitment identifying genuine authorship of to the public good begins to emerge Meanwhile, Kilburn-Toppin put evidence instruments was very challenging more strongly. This tracks broadly from both companies together with against the backdrop of an active with the company’s willingness to important social history sources – market for second-hand (and often lend its infrastructure and personnel criminal records (Old Bailey archive) stolen) objects. New makers and to scientific or technical initiatives and civic inventories (from the City owners frequently erased the broached by other organisations, such of London’s Court of Orphans) – which (true) maker’s name from an as the Society of Arts or the Crown. has allowed a deeper understanding of instrument and inscribed it with the working and commercial spaces Some of these very early findings a new or fabricated maker’s name. of London’s instrument-makers across have been shared by the team at the the long 18th century. First, although Noah Moxham has begun with November 2017 History of Science historiographical attention has focused the East India Company’s archives, Society’s annual conference in on large ‘proto-factories’, such as particularly those from the last Toronto, with a panel on Instruments that overseen by the Troughtons and three decades of the 18th century. and Identity: Material Cultures of Jesse Ramsden, this research has He has noted there an increasing Geographies of Scientific Instrument revealed that most instrument-makers sense of the company’s need for Making in Early Modern London. experienced a fluid boundary between expertise about India in its London In 2018 we are looking forward to domestic, working and commercial administration, and for scientific a workshop on material culture in spaces. Thus, observation and expertise on the ground. history of science research, a panel knowledge of a broad range of Instruments, surveyors and botanists at the European Society for the History instruments, and demonstrations were dispatched to India with a view of Science conference and to working of such things, were relatively common to assessing the potential of the in greater depth with the Science in early modern makers’ households. newly acquired territories for new Museum’s collections and staff. Second, these sources bring into crops and plantations, mineral More details about the project sharper focus working conditions resources, the physical extent can be found on its blog at: within workspaces, such as widespread of the company’s newly acquired metsci.wordpress.com. The Science Museum is a partner in who is Curator Emeritus at the Science Over the following six months, the networks of subcontracting, and the territorial control, and the number a three-year Leverhulme Trust-funded Museum. It sought to set the scene for project’s researchers have been busy high turnover of workers in large of taxable subjects. Maps, charts, research project, Metropolitan the project by inviting 30 speakers to in the archives exploring instrument- establishments. Third, close analysis specimens, samples and reports Science: Places, Objects and Cultures give short talks that addressed the makers, guilds and trading companies of the language used in the criminal flowed regularly in the other direction, of Practice and Knowledge in London, current state of research on a range in greater depth. Both Jasmine 1600–1800, based at the University of of corporations, institutions and less Kilburn-Toppin and I began by Far left: Trade card for John Yarwell, Kent. This project is exploring some formalised cultures of knowledge and consulting the archives of the key St Paul’s Church Yard, London, 1683. of the practical and commercial guilds for instrument-makers, the Left: Folding bow spectacles of glass, practice. Productively, they were horn and steel, English, 1650–1750. contexts for the development of asked to address the nature of their Spectacle Makers’ and Clockmakers’ companies. I looked at the Spectacle Above: A scale for calculating scientific knowledge in 17th- and group, its attitudes to knowledge, interests made by Robert Bretell Makers’ Company’s leadership and 18th-century London, including its production, retention and Bate, 1824. (as far as possible from limited textual, those in which the trade in scientific dissemination, and relationship visual and material evidence) instruments flourished. The project to other London institutions. As well corporate identity. This showed that began in spring 2017 and launched as launching the project and providing formally with a successful and well- in the later 18th and early 19th useful context and background for the centuries, scientific instrument- attended workshop in the Dana project researchers and the curators Research Centre on 16–17 June. making, including philosophical working on the forthcoming London: and mathematical as well as optical The workshop – London 1600–1800: Science City gallery, the workshop instruments, was promoted by the Communities of Natural Knowledge should lead to a journal special issue, company over its original craft and Artificial Practice – was with full-length articles on several of making spectacles. This led programmed by the project’s telling examples from among the many to confident claims about their consultant, Professor Jim Bennett, discussed during the workshop. significance to the development

24 25 BRADFORD’S NATIONAL MUSEUM: CONNECTING BRADFORD WITH THE NATIONAL SCIENCE AND MEDIA MUSEUM

LYNN WRAY Researcher, Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage, University of Leeds

Being a ‘national’ museum has research project: the Bradford’s and aspirations for Bradford. traditionally involved the collection National Museum project, which We will also use this work to establish and display of objects of ‘national will offer new insight by focusing a network of community partners and significance’ and the classification on the National Science and Media local people that can help the museum of these objects according to fixed Museum. The project will critically to develop its role in Bradford through disciplinary boundaries (art, history, investigate what it means to be a regular long-term conversations. science). The rationality of national ‘national museum’ in Bradford – Bradford’s National Museum will museums has also been underpinned a deindustrialised regional city with also experiment with how the city by a conceptual and financial a significant history of migration from of Bradford can be used as an affiliation to the state and by an specific localities in India, Pakistan and incredible asset: to interpret, assumption that the people it serves elsewhere. The project was born out give meaning to and enhance are bound by a shared national of a desire within the National Science understanding of the museum’s identity. What does it mean, then, and Media Museum to understand how collections. Central to the project to be a ‘national museum’ in a world the museum can be of use to the city is the concept of ‘translocality’ of transdisciplinary innovation, when while remaining true to its purpose, – a concept which foregrounds the boundaries between disciplines its focus on the science of sound and the connections between people are no longer stable? What legitimacy image technologies and its status as in specific local areas across does the ‘national museum’ have in part of the Science Museum Group. the globe, rather than between the era of globalisation, when flows Our research team of historians, national states and capital cities. of people, goods, capital and ideas so ethnographers, museum professionals, Bradford exemplifies this concept. commonly transcend national borders? cultural producers, educators and For instance, the city has such close We will co-produce a series of How does a ‘national’ status impact on community partners will use action ties with Mirpur (a city and region in experimental exhibitions, gallery a museum’s international reach and research methods to explore how Pakistan-administered Kashmir interventions, oral histories and its ability to connect with the people these aims can be realised. In the where a high proportion of Bradford’s public broadcasts, to explore how in the place in which it is situated? first phase of the project we will test Pakistani community originated) the translocal experiences of people These questions lie at the core of out together how the museum could that the local radio station Rose FM in Bradford could be used to shine a the work I will be doing for the next use its resources to enable people broadcasts a phone-in programme light on the media technologies in the three years as a researcher on a new, to develop and share stories about simultaneously in both cities. National Science and Media Museum’s AHRC-funded, systemic action their daily lives and their hopes collections. Can Bradford’s special connections to other local places across the globe help to illuminate the role sound and image technologies have played in people’s experience of globalisation? Can the ways in which different generations of people in Bradford have used different media to keep in touch with friends and family in other parts of the world, for example, help visitors to understand more about how sound and image technologies help us stay connected? Keep a lookout in the coming months for the launch of our project website: bradfordsnationalmuseum.org

Right (and top right) David Hockney and staff assemble his composite photograph of the museum, 1985. The museum’s own history features in the research project. Far right: Newspaper advertisement for the new National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, 1983.

26 27 ENERGY IN STORE: WHAT OUR COLLECTIONS MEAN TO THOSE WHO CARE

JACK KIRBY ANNA WOODHAM ELIZABETH HAINES JESSICA BRADFORD Group Head of Collections Lecturer & Researcher, Researcher Collections Engagement King’s College London Project Manager

together for their first store visit Here we explored how a researcher the project website for use by other to Blythe House. Here we began approaches a museum store in both expert researchers and members of to explore the roles that stored a conceptual and practical sense, the public. The project will conclude collections play in enthusiast experts’ for example by considering the value in June 2018 with a public workshop research practices. The group have of browsing the stores as a research where the working group will present considered a broad-ranging set of method and mapping the process an overall summary of our discussions historic energy-related artefacts: of making a request to view a stored and mutual learnings, and offer from dummy parts of nuclear reactors object. The project has already suggestions on how this pilot project to pin badges protesting against the indicated routes to improving could be transferred to other contexts use of nuclear energy; from domestic expert enthusiasts’ access to these across the heritage sector. steam engines to early samples of collections and feeding back the electro-refined copper. We discussed impact of their research activities the contribution enthusiast experts into the Science Museum Group’s might make towards easing curatorial ongoing activities. dilemmas, such as managing extensive Facilitating our discussions throughout collections of similar objects where the project are creative practitioner distinguishing between genuine John Wallett and Aura Films. Together duplication and small but significant they will be producing a short film that differences is a crucial issue. documents our discussions. This very Our second group visit in early importantly enables us to bring December was to the Collections these discussions to a wider audience. Centre at the Museum of Science The film and other creative outputs and Industry in Manchester. will be made freely available on

Far left: Science Museum Group Early in 2017 the Science Museum The enthusiast experts involved in of English Rural Life, explored the collections storage hangar, Wroughton. Group was awarded AHRC funding Energy in the Store include former significant role that enthusiast experts Left: Objects in to conduct a 12-month knowledge and current professional engineers, play in caring for museum collections, storage – the exchange project called Energy in industrial archaeologists and a model particularly those that others may find foreground object is Store (officially ‘Integrating Forms builder, all of whom have different difficult to engage with owing to their the triple-expansion of Care: building communities of reasons for engaging with the stored repetitive or specialist nature. engine of the screw steamship Flamboro’, practice around reserve collections’, collections and offer a range of The Who Cares? project concluded built 1886. grant reference AH/P013678/1). perspectives and professional that although museum staff have a The project brings together a working experiences. Through their networks commitment to improving collections group of collections managers and and wider activities, the enthusiast access, negotiating a suitable level curators from across the Science experts are also champions for the of physical access and inviting Museum Group, and also enthusiast understanding and preservation of external parties to a play role in experts, for a series of discussions industrial and technical heritage right decision-making processes around around the Group’s stored collections across the UK. The project aims to the reserve collections can still be on the theme of ‘energy’. Although better understand the value of stored challenging. The next step was to some of the Group’s 425,000 objects collections for these communities and invite the enthusiast experts and are on permanent display across the to consider methods through which curators to collaboratively investigate museums, and others will feature their perspectives, subject knowledge these issues further. in special exhibitions and loans to and social networks can contribute For Energy in Store, the working-group other venues, most of the collection to collections sustainability. members are united by a common will remain in the stores for the Energy in Store stems from an earlier interest in the history of energy supply foreseeable future. We want to AHRC-funded project called Who and distribution. Until July 2018 we will consider through this project how Cares? Interventions in ‘Unloved’ be meeting at different Science to increase the value and mobility Museum Collections. The Science Museum Group stored collections of these stored collections, as they Museum, in collaboration with staff in order to consider the different represent a vital resource for and academics at the Ironbridge objects, spaces and practices in each. researchers of all kinds, now and Gorge Museum Trust and the Museum In early November the group came for future generations. 28 29 ENGAGING WITH THE SCIENCE MUSEUM The new facility will be regularly GROUP COLLECTION accessible to the public and will welcome researchers interested in In 2017 the Science Museum Group viewing particular objects. Most of relaunched its online collection the 320,000 objects will be catalogued (collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk). and photographed in a mass digitisation The new site consolidates several programme as part of the relocation, websites publishing digitised marking a further step change in online collection material into a single presence. access to the Science Museum Group Although this project marked a significant collection. New ways to discover the step forward in online access to the collection through visualisation and Group’s collection, there is a huge browse tools, as well as contextual amount more to be done. stories and learning resources, will The Energy in Store project comes at enable new audiences across the a particularly important time, as the globe to engage with the collection. Group is embarking on a major strategic initiative to reimagine how its collection is cared for and shared with the world. This ambitious project will transform how our world-class collection, most of which is not on permanent public display, is accessed physically and digitally. Approximately 320,000 objects will be relocated from Blythe House in west London to a new purpose- Left and below: built collections management facility at Science Museum Group the Group’s site in Wroughton, Wiltshire. collections storage facility, Wroughton.

Left to right: Anna Woodham, Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management, Kings College London; David Clarke, Senior Mechanical Design Engineer, Thorlabs; Jack Kirby, Group Head of Collections Services, Science Museum Group.

31 NATIONAL SCIENCE AND MEDIA MUSEUM RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS, 2016–2017

MICHAEL TERWEY Head of Collections and Exhibitions, National Science and Media Museum

In 2017 the National Media Museum represent. Phillip Roberts, who is looked at. Associate Curator became the National Science and working on magic lantern culture Annie Jamieson took part in an Media Museum – a small change in the 19th century, has given talks interdisciplinary workshop at but one that reflects the changes and lantern slide performances at the University of Leiden exploring that the museum has made since the University of Cambridge, the ‘Re-enactment, Replication, 2012 to more closely align with the technology festival in Hebden Bridge Reconstruction’. The participants, opportunities and resources brought and the Royal institution, as well as from the fields of archaeology, by the Science Museum Group as editing a special issue of Early Popular musicology, anthropology, history of a whole. Our new focus on research Visual Culture. Rebecca Smith, whose science, conservation and museology, is part of this change, and we are work focuses on the Daily Herald used historic technologies to make pleased to benefit from the support Archive, has talked about her research things, and took part in re-enactments of the Research and Public History at the universities of Kent and of important experiments from team across all aspects of our Lausanne, and will soon have a the history of science as well as research activity. piece in History Today on the ways discussing ways that these that the Daily Herald picture editors techniques can be used to engage A major success for us this year manipulated photographs to fit the the public in museum contexts. was the news that the AHRC will news agenda of the day. fund a major three-year research On a more routine note, our Library project exploring the museum’s A major focus of our research activity and Archives team have been working relationship with place. ‘Bradford’s over the next five years will be the quietly behind the scenes to improve National Museum: Methods for development of new permanent the information about our collections Refounding “Inter/national” Museums galleries that showcase our collections that we provide to researchers. Translocally’, led by Dr Helen Graham of image and sound technology. Over the last year they have created from the University of Leeds, will use Our Sound and Vision Galleries will and published online collections-level action research methodologies to draw on the latest research and will descriptions for all of our archive explore research questions relating generate new questions and projects. collections, so researchers can now to the interaction between the We have established a curatorial quickly find out about what we have museum and our home city of advisory group of leading experts and how they can access it. Bradford, asking what it means for in the history of our collections, As a result, we have created a series us to be a ‘national’ museum in and in 2017 also hosted the Science of ‘taster’ displays in our museum the 21st century. This research will Museum Group Research Conference foyer showcasing highlights of the directly influence the ways the exploring the theme of ‘Sound and archive collections. We hope this museum works in the future, Vision in Science Museums’ (see will prompt more and more people and is an excellent example of how Sound and Vision: The Second SMG to want to find out more, and explore research can be central to our Research Conference). the wealth of research potential in practice as museum professionals. the museum. The insight we can gain from operating Our collaborative doctoral students historic collections is one area where continue to bring new thinking to our we are particularly interested to work collections and new attention to the – after all, most of our collections were wealth of research potential that they designed to be used rather than

Top right: F Percy Smith, May 1936. Smith was a pioneering science and natural history film-maker, and this photograph is a highlight from the Charles Urban archive, recently catalogued by our Library and Archives team. Right: ‘Re-enactment, Replication, Reconstruction’: Annie Jamieson with Lawrence Principe and John Hopkins in a sand-casting workshop at the Ateliergebouw, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Image courtesy of Roeland Paardekooper.

32 33 RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HISTORY AT THE NATIONAL RAILWAY MUSEUM, 2016–2017

ED BARTHOLOMEW OLI BETTS Senior Curator, National Railway Museum Research Lead, National Railway Museum

is due to relaunch, with a programme of conferences and workshops, in 2018. Other collaborations have continued with the University of York – Ed Bartholomew, Oli Betts, Alison Kay and Karen Baker have all spoken at university–museum events and hosted student and staff study groups in the museum. We continue to build on our working relationship with the University of Sheffield as well. Dr Anna Geurts has been working with the museum in a research capacity but has also proved vital in helping to grow our existing partnership into a £45,000 placement running from January to March 2018. This has been secured through the enthusiastic support of Dr Amanda Crawley Jackson, Director of Impact and Engagement for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and the able assistance of Amy Ryall and Chris Leffler from the university. The Railway Cultures project provides Above: Dining room at an umbrella for research meetings, Stratford railwaymen’s funding bid planning and public dormitory, 1911. outreach through a variety of activities, Below: Great Eastern and is very much a stepping stone Railway Special to wider collaborations in the future. Constable badge 1914. Left: South African The success of the Mystery on the Rails locomotive depot at exhibition on crime fiction and the De Aar in 1968. railways, a new direction for the museum, led to the Journal of Victorian Culture dedicating a special issue to the Victorian railway through the As the National Railway Museum’s history and research responsibilities. project ‘Women and the “Railway close collaboration of Karen Baker Masterplan development picks The return to the museum of Lorna Family” 1900–1948’ adding a new and Dr Trev Broughton from the up pace, with the funding bid Hogger, as Masterplan Curator, and the social history dimension to archival University of York. A collection submitted to the Heritage Lottery hiring of the (soon to be) Dr Thomas material such as staff magazines in of critical articles, released from Fund in November 2017, much of the Spain as Research Associate has the Search Engine collection. Our other behind a paywall to the general public research effort of the museum has dramatically increased both the students – Sophie Vohra (‘Railways and for the first time, was accompanied by been focused on new and intriguing capacity and quality of our research. Commemoration’), Elizabeth Adams an introduction written by Baker. horizons. From the garden cities of Spain’s new position is particularly (‘Literary Cultures, Social Networks Covering everything from the semi- early-20th-century commuter dreams encouraging from a research and and the Victorian Railway Worker’) and mythical ‘railway spine’ to popular to the nitrate railways of the high public history perspective as he was Amanda Stevens (‘Home on the Rails’) fiction and sensational tabloid Andes in Chile and Bolivia, we have originally a collaborative doctoral – all continue to make great strides journalism, this online collection been exploring the potential of our student with the Science Museum with their research projects. showed just how varied the world collections and archives to tell Group – an experience that has The retirement of Professor Mark of railways can be. exciting and challenging stories allowed him to adapt seamlessly Ormrod from the advisory board that will reshape the public’s image to his new role on the Masterplan. of the Institute of Railway Studies of the railways at home and abroad. Our collaborative doctoral programme through ill health has been a sad Most directly related to the Masterplan continues to offer new insights into loss to the ongoing collaboration has been the hiring of two new our collections. Hannah Reeves passed between the University of York members of staff with direct public her viva successfully in late 2017, her and the museum. This collaboration

34 35 MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS, 2016–2017

GEORGINA YOUNG Head Curator, Museum of Science and Industry

The tenth anniversary edition of the ranging from ‘Can citizen science at the University of Leeds in June Manchester Science Festival was deliver to society?’ to ‘The ghost 2017, bringing together Science a high point of the academic year of science past’. Museum Group PhD researchers, 2016/17 at the Museum of Science PhD researchers from the School of Research interest in the Museum and Industry. Part laboratory, part Philosophy, Religion and History of Science and Industry’s creative playground, the festival has public of Science at Leeds and curatorial industries collections accelerated engagement with research at its heart. staff from both the Museum of in the spring of 2017 as archive The exceptional programme produced Science and Industry and the material related to the legendary by lead academic partner University National Science and Media Museum Hacienda nightclub and Factory of Salford included Ryoichi Kurokawa’s to examine ways to approach using Records popped up in the museum’s Unfold – an audiovisual representation objects in PhD research. shop and featured in the Sound and of how the Solar System was born Music Lates, giving mass exposure Meanwhile, the exhibition Electricity: – and Cloud Crash, a series of to stored collections. This enhanced The Spark of Life opened at the installations by artists HeHe which profile led to a dramatic increase in Wellcome Collection in London in drew on research funded by the research appointments to consult February 2017, the result of a three- Natural Environment Research Council the collection and an expansion of way partnership between the to bring atmospheric science to life the museum’s music-interested Wellcome Collection, Teylers Museum across the museum site. research network, building on the and the Museum of Science and The Science Museum Group’s own Science Museum Group’s strong Industry. The exhibition has been research outputs also found a home existing research profile and a lightning rod for research at the in the festival’s 2016 programme, networks around this subject. Museum of Science and Industry for example through a presentation and across the partnership, and The museum’s collaborative doctoral of Jean-Philippe Calvin’s new score bears the influence of Paul Coleman’s award researchers had a winning year for the 1927 silent film Museums of doctoral research into our electricity with Erin Beeston securing the annual the New Age. Moreover, the festival collections and the development of University of Manchester University programme acted as a catalyst for the national grid. It is expected that History Award for her essay ‘A science collections engagement alongside the museum’s research will gain museum “to rival South Kensington”: research as the museum showcased even greater prominence when curating the “university city” and textile dyes at the After School the exhibition is reimagined for establishing the North Western Science Club and curated a Platform Manchester and headlines the Museum of Science and Industry’ for Investigation event around John 2018 Manchester Science Festival. and Josh Butt jointly awarded the Dalton and colour vision. inaugural Science Museum Group The Manchester Science Festival was Journal Writing Prize for his article a fitting conclusion to Manchester’s ‘Adapting to the emergence of the year as European City of Science in automobile: a case study of 2016. This honour was linked to the Manchester coachbuilder Joseph city hosting the EuroScience Open Cockshoot and Co. 1896–1939’. Forum, the largest interdisciplinary Fellow PhD researcher Paul Coleman science meeting in Europe, which itself asked which questions objects can included high-profile contributions answer that archive sources cannot from the museum team on topics when he led an object study workshop

Electrotherapeutic chair, by C.B. Harness, English, 1890–1900 featured in the exhibition Electricity: The Spark of Life.

36 WHAT SCIENCE CAPITAL MEANS: LEARNING RESEARCH ACROSS SMG

KAREN DAVIES JANE RAYNER Head of Learning Research and Resources Audience Research and Advocacy Manager

(An individual’s science capital As the dimensions of science capital covers their knowledge, relevant have become more defined, we have qualifications, interests, attitudes, been identifying where and how contacts, exposure to experiences, the research can support our educational resources and ‘the stuff practice and help us plan for wider they do in their free time’. It also participation. In 2017 the UCL/KCL incorporates identity – whether research team also undertook some individuals see themselves as pilot work on an adult science capital ‘sciencey’ and how their interactions measure. Initial survey results with other people shape this.) suggested that adults had slightly higher levels of science capital The science capital concept is pivotal compared with young people, which to understanding how to support may highlight the value and people from the widest range of significance of science experiences backgrounds to engage with science, beyond school in growing science technology, engineering and maths, capital. We will be watching this work and is being used to shape our learning with interest. programmes, live events, online resources and future exhibitions. Our ambition is to provide experiences that enable more people to make deeper connections with science by accessing the capital they already have. In this way we can change attitudes and encourage more people to engage with science.

The Science Museum Group’s learning and how to design for science talk; authenticity and the range of learning vision is to enrich the lives of a large direct engagement with scientists; experiences that can be mediated and diverse audience by igniting their maker/tinkering spaces, play and by interacting with original objects. curiosity in science, technology, gaming activities; and teachers’ Aspects of the literature review will engineering and maths (STEM). use of digital technology and how be presented and discussed at a We put audiences at the heart it can best support visits. collaborative seminar organised by of everything we do, informed by the Science Museum Group and UCL During 2017 the Audience Research audience research and academic in June 2018. Invitations to this event and Advocacy team worked with research, and our aspiration is to will be forthcoming. academic researchers from University provide people with a learning College London (UCL) to draw together Other academic learning research experience they would not get and review institutional research about projects that are informing the anywhere else. By applying the how visitors engage with objects, Group’s work are detailed below. latest research to our practice, setting it in the context of current we deepen the impact of learning Since 2012 we have been working with academic research on museum across the Group as well as provide King’s College London (KCL) and UCL objects, meanings and engagement. sector-leading good practice. on the Enterprising Science project The result of this collaboration was a to define and quantify science capital, Learning research areas of interest literature review which has highlighted as part of the Science Museum Group’s include under-8s; hard-to-reach some interesting areas for future drive to create a more scientifically audiences; the importance of research. This includes furthering our literate and engaged society. dialogue at an exhibit/display understanding of visitor perception of Illustrations by Michael Parkin.

38 39 In the Science Museum Group’s The Building Bridges project which simpler single-node ones such as a that may not be explicitly related to • Reaching out to families through ‘Inspiring Futures: Strategic Priorities started in 2012 ended in summer 2017. one-off visit to a science festival. science, but which may nonetheless secondary schools might be 2017–2030’ document, our number- It provided young people with links An important finding of this research provide important insights into how insufficient, as neither the schools one priority is to ‘grow science capital (‘bridges’) between the science was also that the students’ families to address issues surrounding nor the families are used to engaging in individuals and societies’. To support learnt at school, the science and family life play an important role underrepresentation of specific with each other beyond a fairly staff in understanding what this means encountered at the Science Museum, in establishing this impact. groups in museums. narrow set of curriculum-related for their work, we are rolling out a and science as part of everyday family issues. There are other more This led to a collaboration in 2015 This work also aimed to examine reflective practice training package activities that take place across prominent networks that are between the Science Museum the specific objectives of the to help everyone understand what settings including the home, parks, part of families’ everyday lives, and UCL to undertake research Building Bridges project and provide science capital is, and to help staff libraries and community centres. including the community and on families who are part of the recommendations for the ongoing apply the concept. Whether behind Initial research on the project religious groups. There is some Building Bridges project and who project and future projects at the the scenes or in a public-facing role, conducted between 2012 and 2015 indication that local networks are members of underrepresented Science Museum and elsewhere. everyone within the Group has a part by Sheffield Hallam University focused can support family engagement visitor groups in the Science Museum The research questions are: to play in creating welcoming, relevant on the impact of the project on how with educational activities, (such as families from ethnic minority and inspiring experiences for our students view, respond to and engage • How might families’ cultural including science engagement backgrounds and families with low audiences, and we hope that through with science in school. This research references and values, including (see the Building Bridges interim socioeconomic status). The research science capital we can create a shared provided evidence that multi-nodal their interests and aspirations, research findings report of August considers the resources, interests understanding of how staff can all interventions can have a longer impact affect their engagement with 2016 for more details). and aspirations these families have work together to achieve just that. on student attitudes to science than Western science? New research projects under way • How do families’ everyday include the Move2Learn project conversations, activities and (begun in September 2017), which skills relate to science content, is exploring 3- to 6-year-old children’s process and/or practice? actions/gestures in relation to their science learning. It involves academics • What is the impact of families’ and museum/science centre involvement in the Building Bridges practitioners from both the UK and project on their views, conversations the USA. COMnPLAY, a European and activities related to science? Horizon 2020 project that began • Emerging findings in August 2016, in June 2017, looks at the nature of among others, indicated that: the informal science learning gained through coding, making (maker • Families are generally very positive spaces) and play (gaming) activities. and enthusiastic about the Science The project uses a science capital Museum. However, some families conceptual framework, and the topic associate the museum primarily with areas have many interesting school visits, and do not necessarily crossovers for the Group. see it as a setting for their families to visit. This seems to be because If you wish to learn more about any they do not think of themselves as of these projects, please contact having the perceived necessary Karen Davies: attributes, including understanding, [email protected] skills and inclination to visit. • Families’ cultural references and values are dynamically shaped through everyday interactions across different contexts. This includes families being guided by local networks surrounding them. For example they establish norms based on, and seek support from, local community and religious groups. This is the case particularly if parents speak a limited amount of English.

40 41 WELLCOME TRUST SECONDMENT FELLOWSHIP SCHEME

TIM BOON Head of Research and Public History

In 2016/17 we were able to welcome When the Wellcome Trust expressed Dr Jo Hedesan, at that stage working to the Science Museum two early- an interest in expanding the scope on the history of alchemy as a career scholars under the newly of the secondment fellowships, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow expanded Wellcome Trust Secondment we at the Science Museum Group in Medical History and Humanities Fellowship Scheme. The Wellcome were most enthusiastic about the at the University of Oxford, brought Trust had decided to develop an potential for suitably qualified people valuable expertise in early modern existing programme in which to come and work with us. Host history to bear on an upcoming researchers funded under its institutions also include the World temporary exhibition on humankind’s doctoral or postdoctoral funding Health Organization Regional Office relationship with the Sun. Dr Ayesha provision could be seconded to the for Europe and the Organisation Nathoo, a Wellcome Trust Research Parliamentary Office of Science for Economic Co-operation and Fellow at the University of Exeter and Technology, where they would Development. The recruitment process working on the history of relaxation undertake a piece of science policy for fellows to come to the Science therapies, brought research expertise work. The scheme combines the Museum included the advertising of in 20th-century medical history to demand for early-career scholars a range of the museum’s upcoming bear on a proposed exhibition on to gain vocational insights with projects, with an invitation to the cultural history of immortality. institutions’ constant requirement applicants to discuss their related Both researchers have seen from for work to be undertaken on priority ideas with staff at the museum. the inside the processes by which projects. The mechanism is simple: museums achieve that most sought- The interview process led on this the Wellcome Trust agrees to continue after achievement: cultural impact occasion to the selection of two paying the successful candidates’ for research. They can feel grateful to postdoctoral researchers to work salary for the period of the the Wellcome Trust for the opportunity developing content for planned secondment at the museum (in this to do so. temporary exhibitions. case, six months). Because the There is an annual competition for secondees are working on projects applications, which is advertised early that matter to the host institution, in the year, with fellowships usually they are satisfying to work on, even as commencing in the autumn. they enable the learning of new skills.

The Kew photoheliograph, 1857: the first astronomical instrument specifically designed for photographing celestial objects. Ayesha Nathoo Featured in the forthcoming Sun exhibition.

42 43 RESEARCH PROJECTS AT THE SCIENCE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

BEATA BRADFORD Archive Collections Manager

create a comprehensive listing of the Drawing on the success of these of Science Museum Group facilities collection, highlighting important projects, we aim to broaden our at the National Collections Centre events, personalities and breakthroughs collaboration with external and at Wroughton. relating to Dunne’s work and life. With internal researchers to help us better the help of Price’s input, we now have understand, share and celebrate our more than 6000 individual entries for world-class collections. Through this this part of the archive. Guy Inchbald collaborative approach, we will continue is working on a biography of Dunne, to expand and make available new predominantly Dunne’s achievements knowledge and insights, form in aerodynamics, and his research and connections that facilitate the insights have been of immense value promulgation of our collections via in increasing understanding of a exhibitions, loans and publications, collection for which little external and grow the science capital in evidence survives. individuals and society. Looking ahead, we are set to embrace and develop the The history of the Science Museum new opportunities that will arise from has been explored in depth by our own both the One Collection project Cate Watson for her dissertation ‘“Is it and the forthcoming establishment a Zoo for Aeroplanes?”: Investigating the Subjects on Permanent Display at the Left: Wright Brothers’ Second Signal Corps aircraft. Science Museum from 1909 to 2000’. Below: From the Burden Neurological Concentrating on factors and influences Institute archives. on gallery design and how they reflected changing priorities of the Museum, Watson gained a comprehensive understanding of the collection which she now applies widely in her work as a member of the archive team, as well as in supporting researchers to delve into the past of our organisation. Following completion of her dissertation, Watson is currently focused on promoting the collection on internal The opening of the Science Museum’s music, philosophy and the Museum website, and for promotion and external platforms. Dana Research Centre and Library in Science Museum’s own history. at specialist conferences and seminars. Another example of mutually beneficial March 2016 has had a transformative As a part of the project, Saunders Dave Saunders, hosted as part of collaboration has been Frances effect on access to our library and is also creating a catalogue of the the Wellcome Secondment Fellowship Morgan, who researched papers of archive holdings. Special collections, archive, which will be available via Scheme, is researching one of our the electroacoustic musician Hugh books and archives previously only prominent medical collections, the Collections Online. Davies as part of her investigation available within the Wroughton Burden Neurological Institute Archive. into the history of Electronic Music Reading Room can now be requested One of the most popular research The institute specialises in human Studios, a London-based studio and for consultation in London, a collections during the past year neurological disorders and clinical electronic instrument company development enthusiastically has been the archive of John William and experimental neuroscience, and operational between 1968 and 1979. welcomed by many of our users. Dunne, an early aviation pioneer its origins can be traced back to the Utilising her expertise in the subject, Utilising facilities across the two and writer on parapsychology. first national institution for mental Morgan helped us to rationalise and sites also enabled us to pilot a series of Two researchers working with this and psychiatric disorders set up by interpret the collection, and has research projects wherein the archive collection focused on different Reverend Burden in 1902. The Science produced a comprehensive listing of team and researchers collaborated aspects of Dunne’s fascinating career Museum holds both archives and its individual components. The resulting on project design, thereby ensuring and achievements. Kitt Price, a senior objects representing the work of the catalogue has been published on maximum availability of research lecturer from Queen Mary University institute, and Saunders is exploring Collections Online. output for our audiences through of London, conducted in-depth the relationships between these integration into archive catalogues, research into the aspects of the collections which have traditionally online publication and promotion on archive that related to Dunne’s work been viewed as separate. He is professional platforms. Within this on parapsychology for her upcoming constructing a unified narrative for new environment, research projects publication on early dream publication in the Science Museum have flourished across areas as precognition theories. During the Group Journal and on the Science diverse as medicine, aeronautics, research, Price was encouraged to

44 45 SCIENCE MUSEUM GROUP PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS, ACADEMIC YEAR 2016–2017

ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS A Boyle and J-G Hagmann (eds), L Burden and D Kelles-Krause, ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS T Boon and B Sherman, 2016; ‘An historiography of science Challenging Collections: Approaches ‘The Science Museum “bubble crate” ‘The Department of Science and starting with the public sphere: the J Bennett, Navigation: A Very Short G Almond, ‘Functional fashion: to the Heritage of Recent Science and system’, ICON News, 67 (November Art revisited: the view from South case of “applied science”’, Modern Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 2017); with harmonising approaches to nineteenth Technology, Artefacts: Studies in the 2016), pp32–34 Kensington’, research seminar, Science Sciences Working Group seminar, M Hunter, The Image of Restoration century spectacles’, Postgraduate History of Science and Technology Vol. Museum, London, October 2016 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Science. The Frontispiece to Thomas O Carpenter, review of Victorian Conference, Swansea University, 11 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian November 2016; ‘How history of Sprat’s History of the Royal Society Telegraphy before Nationalization by October 2016; ‘Spectacles and A Boyle, ‘Collecting and interpreting Institution Scholarly Press, 2017) concepts can bring together history (1667) (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017) S Fari, British Journal for the History short-sightedness: a disability history’, contemporary science, technology of science and STS: the case of applied J Bradford and L Souter, ‘Community of Science, 49/3 (September 2016), Institute of Historical Research, and medicine at the Science Museum, T Boon and Annie Jamieson, John science’, Fellows STS Program seminar, collaboration and mutual benefit: pp496–97 December 2016 London’, Les musées scientifiques et Kannenberg, Aleks Kolkowski and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, experiences from the Science techniques et le patrimoine James Mansell, ‘Organising Sound’, J Desborough, review of the Science K Baker, ‘Railways and the culture November 2016; ‘Penicillin: triumph Museum’, Informal Learning Review, contemporain conference, Musée des Science Museum Group Journal, Vol. 8, and Technology galleries at National of crime’, Making the Connections: and tragedy’, public lecture, Museum 140 (September 2016), pp13–16 Arts et Métiers, Paris, October 2016; no. 08, 2017. Museums Scotland, Science Museum Transport and its Place in History of the History of Science, University ‘Communicating while concealing: R Bud, ‘Science, Brands and the Group Journal, 7 (April 2017), DOI conference, University of York, of Oxford, November 2016; ‘Selling T Boon and Roger Kneebone, Peter exhibiting Britain’s atomic piles, Museum’, Journal of Science 10.15180/170712 November 2016 visions: Kantianism and cameralism Heering, Klaus Staubermann, and Yves 1949–1960’, Fun and Fear: The Communication, vol. 15, no. 6,2016 realised through encyclopediae in Winkin, ‘A Symposium on Histories’, R Highfield, with P V Coveney and E R J Bennett, ‘“Mecanicall Practises Banalization of Nuclear Technologies Germany and beyond’, History of Science Museum Group Journal, Vol. 8, R Bud, ‘“The Spark Gap Is Mightier than Dougherty, ‘Big data need big theory Drawne from the Artes Mathematick”: through Public Displays and Activities Science Society Annual Meeting, no. 08, 2017. the Pen”: The Promotion of an Ideology too’, Philosophical Transactions of the mathematical repute and the navigator conference, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Atlanta, GA, November 2016 of Science in the Early 1930s’. Journal Royal Society A, 374/2080 (October John Davis’, Beyond the Academy: The Barcelona, June 2017 T Boon and James Mooney, Dorien of Political Ideologies, vol. 22, no. 2, 2016), DOI 10.1098/rsta.2016.0153 Practice of Mathematics from the L Burden, B Cairncross and E Duggan, Schampaert), ‘Editorial: Alternative A Boyle and R Higgitt, ‘London 1600– May 2017, pp. 169–81. Renaissance to the Nineteenth ‘Cutting down on contractors: trialling Histories of Electroacoustic Music’, B Regel, J Langfeldt, L Burden and M 1800: communities of natural Century conference, British Society the use of museum staff from all Organised Sound, 22 (2017), 143–49 R Bud, ‘Adventures in Museology: Ryan, ‘Doping at the Science Museum: knowledge and artificial practice’, for the History of Mathematics, York, departments to pack deinstalled Category Building over a Century, and the conservation challenge of doped panel discussion, London 1600–1800: T Boon ‘“Programmes of Real Cultural April 2017; ‘Robert Hooke and the medical objects’, 18th European the Context for Experiments in fabric aircraft in the Flight gallery’, Communities of Natural Knowledge Significance”’: BBC2, the Sciences and management of images: seeing, Association of Museums of the Reinvigorating the Science Museum at Science Museum Group Journal, 6 and Artificial Practice conference, the Arts in the Mid-1960s, Journal of drawing and printing in the service of History of Medical Sciences Congress, the Turn of the Twenty-First Century’. (October 2016), DOI 10.15180/160605 Science Museum, London, June 2017 British Cinema and Television, 14, 2, the mechanical philosophy’, Art and Groningen, September 2016 Science Museum Group Journal, vol. 8, pp.324-43 B Russell (ed.), Robots: The 500-Year Science: A Binary Relationship? E Bruton, ‘From a spark to a flame: no. 08, 2017 L Burden, J Langfeldt, B Regel and M Quest to Make Machines Human conference, University of Pisa, May Arthur Heaviside’s experiments with Ryan, ‘Informing conservation (London: Scala, 2017) 2017; ‘“That incomparable instrument wireless communications in the 1880s’, management decision making at the Vickers Vimy aircraft in maker”: the reputation of Henry British Society for the History of Science Museum: investigating the the Science Museum’s Sutton’, History of Practical Science Annual Meeting, University Flight gallery. properties of doped fabric aircraft’, Mathematics conference, Universitat of York, July 2017; ‘“Uncertain at Science Museum Group Research Day, Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, March 2017 present for women but may increase”: Science Museum, London, March 2017 opportunities for women in wireless O Betts, ‘Enginorum: the culture of a telegraphy during World War One S Butler, ‘“Chernobyl couldn’t happen Great Western Railway office’, Institute and the interwar era’, The British Post here”: exceptional reactors and of Railway Studies, University of York, Office in the Telecommunications Era exceptional public opinion’, Material November 2016; ‘Maintaining the conference, Science Museum, London, Cultures of Energy workshop, Science connections: a social and cultural August 2017 Museum, London, September 2016 history of the permanent way’, Making the Connections: Transport and its R Bud, ‘Applied science’, keynote O Carpenter, ‘Concrete hopes and Place in History conference, University address, 2nd International Conference fears’, Being Human Festival of the of York, November 2016 on the History of Physics, European Humanities, Science Museum, London, Physical Society, Pöllau, September November 2016 C Binks and H de Saram, ‘Conservation 2016; prerecorded contribution to on the Dynamometer’, Annual Carriage A Cliff, ‘A 3D chart of energy ‘Collections and museums in the Restorers’ Convention, North Norfolk consumption, 1951–54: methodological history of science and technology’, Railway, October 2016 challenges’, DEMAND Centre seminar, 9th Greek Conference of History and Lancaster University, November 2016; T Blyth, ‘Six networks that changed the Philosophy of Science in Science ‘Three museum objects: three world’, Heinz Nixdorf Colloquium, Heinz Teaching, Athens, November 2016; methodological challenges’, Material Nixdorf Museums Forum, Paderborn, contribution to commemorative round Practices of Energy Consumption: Use October 2016 table on the foundation of the Society and Abuse of Energy in the Past for the Social Studies of Science, T Boon, ‘The synaesthetic museum’, conference, Science Museum, London, Where Has STS Traveled conference, Understanding Use, Artefacts XXI September 2016 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, October conference, Science Museum, London, October 2016 46 47 R Cole, ‘“Chemist has the answer” of Science, Technology and Medicine Apparatuses conference, University photography archive’, Doing Visual J Ward, ‘The politics of automating (The Guardian): George Porter, a master’s students, Museum of Science of Cambridge, July 2017 History: Using Visual Sources in History the telephone network in post-WWII cheerleader for chemistry in post-war and Industry, Manchester, Teaching and Research workshop Britain’, Annihilating Space & Time: H Robertson, ‘Gunpowder experiments Britain’, New and Old Themes in the November 2016 for academic staff and postgraduate 150 Years of Transatlantic in the early Royal Society c. 1660– History of Chemistry meeting, Royal students in the East Midlands, Telecommunication conference, Royal R Highfield, ‘Bioethics and its role in 1700’, research seminar, Science Institution, London, May 2017; ‘Static Loughborough University, Institution, London, September 2016 public policy’, Bioethics and its Role Museum, November 2016 displays: exhibiting the Royal September 2016 in Public Policy conference, Institute Institution’s Nairne machines, 1802– D Rooney, ‘Quartz clocks and the of Contemporary Arts, London, K Tracey, ‘Marking mathematical present’, The Evolution of the Museum, public in Britain, 1930–60’, research November 2016 readers in early modern England: V&A Universal Histories and Universal seminar, Science Museum, an analysis of John Seller’s A Pocket Museums conference, Blythe House, N Logan, ‘Producing tours of their November 2016 Book and Its Annotations’, British London, July 2017 Blythe Road stores as part of LB D Rooney and T Parkin, ‘Mathematics Society for the History of Mathematics Hammersmith and Fulham’s Artsfest C Connelly, ‘Untangling Ohm’s and the public: Science Museum Research in Progress meeting, festival and how they deal with apparatus’, Object Lessons and Nature approaches to hands-on and history’, University of Oxford, February 2017; research requests’, Tour de Store: Tables: Research Collaborations MATRIX Conference, University of research seminar, Science Museum, Improving Public Access to Collections Between Historians of Science and Leeds, September 2016 June 2017; ‘Revisiting the “Stationers’ in Storage conference, Museum of University Museums conference, Commonwealth”: printing knowledge London, July 2017 B Russell, ‘A curatorial research University of Reading, September 2016 in the seventeenth-century metropolis’, approach’, Postgraduate Festival, A McLean, ‘The most successful Metropolitan Science, 1500–1700: Information Age A Coulls, ‘The Fletcher Jennings Rutherford College, University of gallery at the train in the world?’, High Speed Rail Open Workshop, Science Museum, locomotive works at Lowca’, Institute Kent, May 2017; ‘Making exhibitions: Science Museum, Technologies seminar, Institution June 2017 the subject of a of Railway Studies, University of York, a curatorial approach’, CDP research of Mechanical Engineers, London, presentation by November 2016 workshop, British Museum, London, Tilly Blyth this year. September 2016 February 2017; ‘Making machines in A Coulls and H de Saram, D Millard, ‘Spacecraft as samovars: the the city’, Metropolitan Science: Places, ‘Conserving a restoration’, Paint on making of the Cosmonauts exhibition’, Objects and Cultures of Practice and the Move Traditional Paint Forum science and technology studies Knowledge in London, 1600–1800 conference, Black Country Living departmental seminar, University workshop, Science Museum, June Museum, Dudley, September 2016 College London, October 2016 2017; ‘Robots: managing public J Desborough, ‘The making of the expectations in an exhibition setting’, S Mossman, ‘Early plastics: parkesine, modern clock & watch dial 1550–1770’, AI: Myth and Reality conference, celluloid and legacy’, Plastics Heritage Antiquarian Horological Society Leverhulme Centre for the Future Forum Kunststoffgeschichte 2016, meeting, Threadneedle Investments, of Intelligence, University of Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, London, November 2016; ‘Scientific Cambridge, May 2017 Berlin, October 2016; ‘Early plastics: instrument makers 1600–1800’, perspectives 1850–1950’, 39th History H de Saram and S Houldridge, ‘STEM’ Metropolitan Science conference, of Technology Conference, Iron Chemistry in Art 6th Form Workshop Science Museum, London, June 2017 Library, Schlatt, November 2016; Conference, University of York, S Emmens and K Gonzalez-Bell, ‘Objects made of cellulose acetate September 2016 ‘Working with the wounded: the at the Science Museum: collection, R Smith, ‘20th July 1933. Following co-curation of military mental health’, conservation, exhibition’, Transparent Malindine’s assignment photographing 18th European Association of Museums Figures – Exhibition Icons of the 20th a protest march through the Daily of the History of Medical Sciences Century interdisciplinary graduate Herald picture library’, seminar for Congress, Groningen, September 2016; programme for long-term conservation De Montfort University photographic Understanding Use, Artefacts XXI of plastic objects, Deutsche Hygiene- history MA students, National Media conference, Science Museum, London, Museum, Dresden, June 2017 Museum, Bradford, February 2016; October 2016 H Reeves, ‘Who were the Railway ‘“Our picture shows... Scenes in the J Hicks, ‘Introduction to the archive Women’s Guild? A case study of Daily Herald news room”: how the collections at the Museum of Science Gloucester, 1900–1948’, Women’s Daily Herald perceived itself at work’, and Industry’, workshop and study History Network Conference, Leeds Displaying Knowledge through session for Manchester Metropolitan Trinity University, September 2016 Photography, 10th International University School of Art interactive Conference of the Doctoral P Roberts, ‘Building media history from arts students, Museum of Science Programme Dispositives of Vision: fragments: ephemeral technologies and Industry, Manchester, September Cinema, Photography and Other Media, and material economies’, Excavating 2016; presentation to University of University of Lausanne, November Media: Devices, Processes, Manchester Centre for the History 2016; ‘Questions of evidence in a press

48 49 OUR STUDENTS

NEW COLLABORATIVE DOCTORAL STUDENTS, 2017

AMANDA STEVENS FRANCESCA ELLIOTT REBECCA KEARNEY Project title: Home on the Rails: PhD Title: Power-assisted learning? Project title: “False Teeth for The design fitting and decoration of Exhibiting, interpreting and teaching the Masses”: Artificial Teeth as train interiors in Britain c 1920-1955 on technology in the twentieth- Technologies, Prostheses and century industrial city Commodities in Britain, 1848–1948 Supervisors: Dr Clare Taylor (Open University) and Anthony Supervisors: Dr James Sumner, The Supervisors: Dr Claire L. Jones Coulls (National Railway Museum) University of Manchester; Jan Hicks, (First Supervisor, University of Museum of Science and Industry Kent). Dr Oisin Wall (First Supervisor, Traditionally railway carriages have Science Museum Group). been singled out for their special or Description: Working with the Dr Julie Anderson (Second unique features. This project centres collection and archives of the MSI, Supervisor, University of Kent). on the lives of a select number of this project is looking at the use Dr Jack Davies (Second Supervisor, carriages which served a variety of model engines in teaching in the Science Museum Group) of routes, purposes and people. twentieth century industrial city. It interrogates the materiality of At the height of Manchester’s industrial This project will examine the the interiors, uncovering design prowess, models were used in transformation in the consumption choices and designers and considers education both professional and and use of artificial teeth in Britain the kitchen car as a paradigm for the public. Many of these models became between 1848 and 1948. Drawing modern domestic kitchen. part of the MSI’s collection and are on the Science Museum collections, now used as demonstration pieces. it will assess how artificial teeth took on multiple meanings in everyday life. CAMERON TAILFORD The research has important GEORGINA JAYNE LOCKTON Project title: Making electronics in implications for expanding interwar Britain: gendered labour Research project title: Science, historical scholarship on health, in the thermionic valve industry Technology and Road Safety in prostheses, dental technology, the Motor Age consumer culture and the afterlife Supervisors: Graeme Gooday, of objects within the museum Annie Jamiseon, Alison Fell Supervisors: Professor Simon Gunn and Dr Sally Horrocks (University of Precis: This research project will Leicester). Dr Oliver Carpenter and SARAH MURPHY-YOUNG investigate the new electronics Dr David Rooney (Science Museum) industries that emerged in Britain Project title: Constructing and during the inter war years and focus This PhD topic is concerned with the Consuming Imagined Futures: on their predominantly female history and development of road Advertising Healthcare to workforce. In particular this project safety research in Britain, focusing Publics and Professionals will look at the thermionic valves that specifically on the technological in Twentieth-century Britain were mass produced by women during innovations of the 1960s and 1970s. Supervisors: James Stark. the period and were used in a variety A variety of road safety items from Adrian Wilson. Oisín Wall of consumer electronics including this period, which are held in the phones and radios, many of which are collections of the Science Museum, The project will investigate, compare now held at the Manchester Museum form the main primary sources on and explain the use of language, of Science and Industry.’ which this object centred thesis expertise and authority in printed will be based. advertisements and publicity produced for public audiences and medical professionals regarding different healthcare products and campaigns in twentieth-century Britain. Three case studies will provide a national picture of the interactions between healthcare producers and consumers before and after the NHS was founded.

PhD student Erin Beeston conducting a site tour at The Museum of Science and Industry.

51 OUR STUDENTS OUR STUDENTS

COLLABORATIVE DOCTORAL AWARD AND PARTNERSHIP STUDENTS, COLLABORATIVE DOCTORAL STUDENTS, PRE-2017 START PRE-2017 START

PRE-2013 CDA LAURA NEWMAN* HANNAH REEVES* CDP 2015+ SOPHIE VOHRA *Subsequently submitted/awarded Making germs real: creating, Women and the ‘railway family’ Railways and Commemoration: CAT RUSHMORE* performing and learning about (1900–48) DOM WELDON Anniversaries, Commemorative a dangerous invisible thing in Cultures and the Making of Keele University and National Chemicals in the Home the public sphere, c.1860–1930 Mapping the Historical Growth Railway History Railway Museum & Cultural Context of the British Oxford Brookes and Science Museum History, KCL and Science Museum University of York and National Fixed Line Network Railway Museum JACOB WARD* King’s College, Science Museum TOM RICHARDS* NOEME SANTANA* and BT Archives Dollis Hill Project C: Research TOM RITCHIE Oramics: Precedents, Technology Building an empire: corporate Transplanted and Privatised: and Influence vision and the global geographies Post Office/British Telecom R&D FRANCES MORGAN Meccano: The nuts and bolts of science of infrastructure in the Digital and Information Era University of Kent and Science Museum Goldsmiths and Science Museum Electronic Music Studios in musical, Geography, RHUL and Science Museum University College London, commercial and international Science Museum and BT Archives perspective CDP 2013+ TANYA KENNY CDP 2016+ PAUL COLEMAN Royal College of Art and Britain’s Railways in the Great War, Science Museum ARON STERK ALICE HAIGH 1914–1918 Danger – High Voltage: the rise of megavolt electricity supply Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717–1791): Dollis Hill Project A: ‘Research is History, Aberdeen and National in 20th century Britain GEMMA ALMOND multicultural and multinational the door of tomorrow’ c. 1910–1983 Railway Museum Correcting vision in nineteenth- networks in Georgian London (PhD 1 of 3) University of Leeds and MOSI century England: A social, University of Lincoln, Royal Society History & Philosophy of Science, cultural, medical and material THOMAS SPAIN* and Science Museum Leeds and Science Museum PHILLIP ROBERTS* history of spectacles Food Miles: the Imaginings, Politics and Practices of Food Distribution Magic Lantern Culture in Britain Swansea University and CAROLINE AVERY CAITLIN DOHERTY in the UK, ca1920-1975 (1850–1920): Exhibition, Reception Science Museum and Mixed Media Landscapes Making the pulse: the Reception of Representations of Flight: The IRS, History, York and National the Stethoscope in nineteenth century Eighteenth Century Imagination Railway Museum University of York and National JOSH BUTT Britain, 1817-1870. and Modern Collections Media Museum The rise and fall of the Manchester University of Leeds and History & Philosophy of Science, motor industry, 1896–1939 Cambridge and Science Museum CDP 2014+ RACHEL BOON Science Museum Manchester Metropolitan University, Museum of Science and Industry BENJAMIN REGEL Dollis Hill Project B: ELIZABETH ADAMS EMILY MARSDEN The Research Life of the Established 2016: Media in the First World War Conserving doped fabric aircraft: ‘Station’ in the ‘long Cold War’: KEVIN TRACEY Literary Cultures, Social Networks historic origins; heritage outcomes Analogue and Digital Era and the Railway Worker, 1840–920. History and Centre for Advanced Calculating value: using and collecting Imperial College and Science Museum University of Manchester, Science University of Stirling and National Photography Studies, Durham the tools of early modern mathematics and Media Museum Museum and BT Archives Railway Museum CHARLOTTE CONNELLY Swansea University and Science Museum JOSHUA SCARLETT ERIN BEESTON Investigating the flow of electrical Spaces of industrial heritage: ideas through the instruments of REBECCA SMITH Instruments and their makers: A study a history of uses, perceptions and their discovery, from 1800–1850 of experiment, collaboration and The Daily Herald: Popular desires identity in seventeenth-century London remaking of the Liverpool Road Cambridge University and and managing the production Station site, Manchester Science Museum University of York, Science Museum of photographs CHSTM, Manchester and MOSI and Royal Society DeMontford University and National Media Museum

52 53 OPPORTUNITIES TO STUDY AND RESEARCH WITH US

TIM BOON Head of Research and Public History

The Science Museum Group’s research students are often closely involved in in September 2016 was so fruitful studies MSc programme. This option For individuals with doctorates, People at all the different stages of ethos is intrinsically collaborative: writing these proposals, and that this that it has led to a special issue of our provides students, who may come from at whatever career stage they academic experience described here we want to work with colleagues in approach provides an alternative route Journal to be published in spring 2018. science or humanities first degrees, have reached, we have fellowship have the opportunity to interact in the the universities and other heritage to self-determined study for those who with insights into the ways in which and associateship schemes that Research Centre, where the reading The Science Museum Group Journal organisations who share our have particular interests in material the ‘history of science’ – as broadly are designed to support long-term room and some limited ‘hot desk’ is another example of how we like passionate interest in museum culture or museums. Increasingly, we conceived – is done in museums. relationships and targeted research provision enables people to join our to work with colleagues in the collections, the public culture also welcome students funded under The option has a particular stress projects. Our small number of research culture, just as they do when universities, and with other museums of science – including museum other schemes, and indeed by other on objects, the material record of associates are fellow travellers they attend our seminars, workshops too. We see this publication as a key audiences and museum possibilities funders, to work in our Research the practice of science, technology on particular research journeys. and conferences. home for discussion on the issues more widely. This will be evident Centre and on our collections. and medicine in the past – including These individuals may be spending and subjects that unite everyone If you would like to study or research throughout the pages of this report. the recent past. Students learn from a a research sabbatical with us, or may The Dana Research Centre and Library who loves science and technology with us, please take a look at our web wide range of case studies taught by become fellows when funding Our doctoral programme is one is the venue for a rich variety of museums, including those who work pages, group.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ a dozen curators, looking into: the becomes available. Our fellows are example; each student has a seminars, workshops and conferences. in them. We are proud of the journal’s our-work/research-public-history, 95% of the museum’s collections not supported by a variety of agencies, supervisory team that brings together The majority of these are also the fruit mixed authorship, which unites senior or e-mail us at: on display, and the 5% that is; and including RCUK and European funding university-based researchers with of collaborations with universities, faculty and early career researchers, [email protected] exhibitions that have been completed bodies, trusts and foundations. museum-based professional staff. and notably of joint research projects, many of whom are publishing their and remain on display, as well as The conversations around the whether the Group is Co-Investigator first article. For all our research collaborations, those in development. We consider development of the students’ projects or Project Partner. We like to be we stress that at any given time the The Research Centre is also host to key technologies from astrolabes enact the dialogue between museums involved in projects that shed light museums in the Group have particular a wide range of researchers and to rockets and stretchers to and universities. Would you like to on our collections and the contexts research priorities, most often related students, all contributing to the phonographs; students learn how supervise a student or be a doctoral in which they arose and were used. to upcoming galleries and exhibitions, museum’s programmes at the same the museum goes about tackling the student at the Science Museum Group? One example this year was a very although more distant research time as they pursue research that large-scale and unwieldy material Most of our students are supported by fruitful project partnership with propositions that employ our will be submitted, published or culture associated with infrastructure our collaborative doctoral partnership the AHRC-funded ‘Material Cultures collections are always of interest to us. performed under their own names. or sound, for example. Some students funded by the Arts and Humanities of Energy’ project led by Frank It is here that we undertake most of stay on to write their dissertations with Research Council. Our consortium – Trentmann and Hiroki Shin of the teaching for our ‘curating science us; there is a near infinity of museum which includes all the museums of the Birkbeck, University of London and technology’ ten-week option objects that can be the focus of a long Science Museum Group alongside (featured in the previous issue of within UCL’s science and technology essay informed by the readings and the Royal Society, Royal Geographical this report). The project workshop debate across the whole MSc. Society and BT Archives – currently awards six studentships per annum. Early each summer we publish a document outlining the subject areas in which we are most interested, and arrange meetings where potential supervisory teams can discuss potential projects. We then invite colleagues in the museums and universities to work together to propose projects that address those areas for a first-round closing date in September, and the shortlisted projects must be submitted by late November. A panel selects the best projects in January, after which the universities advertise the studentships to start in the following October. It is worth mentioning that prospective

Right: Oil Rigs Silhouetted Against a Texas Sunrise. Far right: Metal ammoniaphone - a nineteenth century instrument designed to help singers and public speakers improve the quality of their voice.

54 55 OUR TEAM

TIM BOON ROBERT BUD RICHARD NICHOLLS Head of Research & Public History Research Keeper Assistant Editor, Science Museum Group Journal Tim is Head of Research & Public Robert is Research Keeper and an Richard is the Assistant Editor for History and a historian of the public Arts and Humanities Research Council the Science Museum Group Journal, culture of science. He is responsible Leadership Fellow. He is carrying out a new publication which presents for developing the Museum’s Research a major project on the history of the the global research community with & Public History programme, which concept of applied science from the peer-reviewed papers relevant to the is concerned with investigating fall of the Bastille to the raising of wideranging work of the Science the lay historical imagination as it the Iron Curtain. Having previously Museum Group. relates to science and technology. published books on the histories of His exhibitions include Health Matters antibiotics and of biotechnology, he (1994) and Making the Modern World is now developing understanding of PETER MORRIS (2000). His first book, Films of Fact, applied science in the post-Second Research Fellow Emeritus was published in 2008, and he is World War era through a new research Peter co-authored Robert Burns co-editor (with Frode Weium) of project on the history of Britain’s civil Woodward: Architect and Artist in Artefacts: Material Culture and nuclear power industry. the World of Molecules (Chemical Electronic Sound (2013). Heritage Foundation, 2001), edited ADAM BOAL the Museum’s official history Science ALISON HESS for the Nation (Palgrave, 2009) and Research and Public history Coordinator recently completed The Matter Research & Public History Manager Adam is responsible for coordinating Factory: A History of the Chemistry Alison supports a variety of activity the research and Public History Laboratory (Reaktion, 2015). in the department, including applying department, providing support for for grant funding and supporting and assisting in the wide range of others to do so. She also manages the activities the team are involved in. Collaborative Doctoral Partnership He organises the programme of events scheme and the Science Museum’s held by the department such as relationships with Doctoral Training conferences, talks and seminars. Partnerships. Alison works with other He also provides support to the research organisations to develop collaborative doctoral students, expertise in grant applications within research associates and fellows. the heritage sector. As well as her work to support the department, Alison also runs her own research projects. KATE STEINER Science Museum Group Journal BERGIT ARENDS Kate is Editor of the Science Museum Group Journal, an open-access Research & Public History Manager online journal publishing peer- (maternity cover) reviewed articles relevant to the Bergit manages the Collaborative Science Museum and the three Doctoral Award Partnership scheme other national UK museums within and supports the activities of the the Group. Previously Kate was Head department. Bergit works with other of Audience Research at the Science museum and archives organisations Museum and has worked in Exhibitions to develop the expertise and structures and Learning. for research into collections. Currently Bergit also works on her own doctoral research at Royal Holloway, University of London, and curates contemporary art works at the Natural History Museum in Berlin.

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