SIS Bulletin Issue 15

Scientific• • • Instrument Society Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society No. 15 1987 Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society For Table of Contents, ~ inside back over. Mailing Address for Editorial Matters Dr. ion Darius c~o Science Museum London SW7 2DD United Kingdom Mailing Address for Administrative Matters Mr Howard Dawes Neville House 42/46 Hagley Road Birmingham BI6 8PZ United Kingdom Mailing Addreu for Meetings Mr. David Weston 44 Duke Street St. James's London SW1Y ODD Executive Committee Gerard Turner, Chairman Derek Howse, Vice-Chairman Howard Dawes, Executive Secretary David Weston, Meetings Secretary Brian Brass, Treasurer Jon Baddeley Jeremy Collins Jon Darius John Dennett Arthur Middleton Stuart Talbot Editor of the Bulletin Ion Darius Editorial Assistant Peter Delehar Typesetting and Printing ttalpen Design and Print Limited Victoria House Gertrude Street Chelsea London SWI0 0JN United Kingdom 101-351 5577) (Price: £b per issue including back numbers where available) The Scientific Instrument Society is a Registered Charity No. 326733. Editor's Page No Time like the Present Scientific Instruments. The two maior by modern materials, not just the fact science weeklies Nature and Science that some of them are radioactive but both carry regular instrument reviews more generally our ignorance of how The past is a foreign country, someone and Physics Bulletin issued a best to conserve novel materials such once said, but so is the present. If it is supplementary "Buyer's Guide" for as plastics. The Tare Gallery is battling hard to record the past without wilfully the first time this year. Then there are with this problem in respect of Nauru or inadvertently rewriting it, it is no the house journals like Befl System Gabo's acrylic sculptures. less difficult to take cognizance of the Technical Journal, Jena Review, present. In terms of scientific Marconi Instruments Contact, and Yet another complication arises from instruments and their manufacture, Sira's Measurement and Automation the continued usefulness of technology the same enthusiasts who deplore the News. The last few years have seen the consigned to the museum. A ten-year- inadequacy of company records, birth of a new type of instruments old X-ray telescope about to be lament the apparatus no longer journal, the controlled-circulation acquired by the Deutsches Museum surviving and condemn the trade magazines such as Electro Optics, was recently scrambled for a rocket maltreatment of that which does -- the or European Spectroscopy News- flight by German astronomers anxious same ones all too often somehow generally distributed free and more to keep the spectacular supernova in cannot bring themselves to than paid for by manufacturers' the Large Magellanic Cloud under acknowledge the importance of advertisements which will no doubt be observation. Earlier this year the existing firms, contemporary invaluable to future curators and National Air and Space Museum, part techniques, pristine examples of collectors. of the Smithsonian Institution in instruments in current production. Washington, parted with its Voyager So we need not feel too guilty about our That the present is the past of the spacecraft to act as an engineering test failure to span the gamut of 20th- future is to them empty rhetoric; they model for Magellan, the Venus radar century instrumentation, but at the feel no commitment to this ineluctable mapping mission. Only a few months truth. same time we would be foolish to ignore it. To redress the balance in part previously the Museum had relinquished components of a Transit With commendable perspicacity the this Bulletin includes a substantial 5A satellite on display to furnish an Scientific Instrument Society did not study of the absorptiometer designed upper-atmosphere research satellite. shackle its limbs by limiting itself in by Hilger & Watts, a book review geography or period. (After all, it concerned with modern astronomical might have been christened BASIS, spectroscopes and a mystery object These rather special considerations The British Antiquarian Scientific presumed to be of 20th-century aside, private collectors should not be Instrument Society!) but there is still a manufacture. afraid of venturing into the waters of quite overwhelming concern with modernity. Discerning collectors in the older apparatus to the detriment of Do museums collect 20th-century fine arts no longer wait for the Bacons anything too modern. I can think of apparatus? Where they exist, company and Hockneys to reach the West End several slightly sanctimonious excuses. museums will do so, of course. As for and Fifth Avenue; they are prepared to The range of older instruments as the national collections, not one would stake their good taste on relative judged from, say, 19th-century dare admit that it did not -- but newcomers to the art world. By the catalogues is large but tractable frequently collection policy allows time their scientific counterparts whereas the proliferation of modem such instruments to be acquired only realize that, say, the Brunsviga which equipment cannot hope to be in the most desultory fashion. Curators they so recently dismissed as a encompassed by a small society and its secure them the way some people calculating dinosaur actually slim Bulletin. Or we can claim that the adopt stray animals: the creature begs, represents a very significant and differences are not just in quantity but whines and cajoles its way into the successful stage in calculator design, it in character -- electronic components household. What we need is a far more will have become a rare species and constitute very different kettles of fish active policy of seeking out what correspondingly dear. A few prescient from sundials, sextants and appear to be significant representative souls already collect in this area, and saccharimeters. Or else we could argue examples of modem instruments. Why there are also some collections of that whilst we enjoy some sort of should museums wait to acquire them electronic pocket calculators. Other perspective on the circumstances -- bruised, battered, incomplete, apparatus may pose insuperable which engendered the need for and shorn of instructions, devoid of problems of size, mass and governed the nature of instruments of provenance or historical context, conservation for the private collector. the past -- how they were made, in priced outrageously for no other reason what numbers, of what materials, to than sheer rarity -- from an auctioneer what tolerance, for what market -- we or antique dealer in a century's time? ! am well aware that those who salivate cannot see the contemporary wood for at the mere mention of a ring dial by its innumerable trees. Admittedly museums encounter Thomas Heath will profess to be bored special problems in dealing with rigid by what the 20th-century has to Even laying these progressively lamer contemporary material. No official offer. They are self-deluding and excuses to one side, we could assert bounds may be placed on size, for moreover self-depriving. Having just with some justice that the Bulletin example, but there are practical limits. returned from an exhibition of "British should not unduly expand its 20th- The largest single object in the custody Clock and Watch Making Today" at century coverage for the simple reason of London's Science Museum is the Goldsmiths' Hall, I can vouch for the that other outlets exist for today's prototype of Concorde. Desirable as it craftsmanship manifest in these instruments, if not always from the might be, future acquisition of the instruments. Perhaps this example standpoint which a member of the SIS electron-positron storage ring from smacks of the anachronistic, however; might want to adopt. The most general CERN, 27 kilometres in circumference, the timepieces may be 20th-century periodicals include the likes of Journal would scarcely be feasible. (! suppose work but the underlying technology is of Physics E: Scientific Instruments, that it could in the event be run as an rather venerable. Digital watches, it Measurement and Control, Review of outstation!) Other problems are posed could be said, are rather more typical. Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society No. 15 (1987) Contemporary science and technology interferometer or the Curta calculator. himself moves forward, anxious to have granted us other instruments no show you his latest invention, the less exciting than those of the past, If you are not convinced that the double or compound microscope. Do :tom the electron microscope and laser present is as worthy of your attention you say thanks awfully but what you io the digital computer and the SQUID as the past, place yourself in the need for the mantlepiece is a nice :nat~netometer. Nor are this centurv's position of someone who drops in at antique backstaff? ! hope not. oltermgs wholly electromechanical the Reflecting Microscope and and electronic; think of the Michelson Spectacles about 1742. John Cuff ]on Darius Report on the 1987 Annual General Meeting Ihe Scientific Instrument Society held adoption by Stuart Talbot and Millburn as the "scourge of curators", its AGM for 1~87 on Saturday, 2(i June, seconded bv Arthur Middleton. feared because his claims generally in a lecture theatre of the British The Chairman Gerard Turner then turn out to be right. Although his Mu,~eum. [he minutes of the previous dealt with the composition of the interest in scientific instruments and AGM as rel~wted in the Bulletin were newly elt~'ted Executive Committee. their makers started as a hobby, he had approved and there being no matters become more professional than the Alan Stimson and Stephen Edell were arising, the Fxecutive ~C~retarv stepping down to be replaced by Derek professionals. His masterly work on Howard Dawes went on to give an Beniamin Martin, James Fergu.~m and Howse and Jon Baddeley, and Trew)r account of the membership. At the we hope in a few years' time George Waterman handed the mantle of time of the meeting there welt, 397 Adams, ahmg with his many articles, Meetings Secretary.

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