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SIS Bulletin Issue 9 Scientific Instrument Society Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society No. 9 1986 Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society For Table of Contents, i~e inside back cover. Mailing Address for Editorial Mattent Dr. Jon Darius c/o Science Museum London SW7 2DD United Kingdom Mailing Addrem for Administrative Matters Mr. Howard Dawes Neville House 42/46 Hagley Road Birmingham B16 8PZ United Kingdom Executive Committee Gerard Turner, Chairman Alan Stimson, Vice-Chairman Howard Dawes, Executive Secretary Trevor Waterman, Meetings Secretary Bnan Brass, Treasurer Jeremy Collins Jon Darius John Dennett Alan Miller Carole Stott David Weston Editor of the Bulletin Ion Darius Editorial Auistant Peter Delehar Typesetting and Printing Halpen Design and Print Limited Victoria House Gertrude Street Chelsea London SW10 0JN United Kingdom (01-351 5577) (Price: £6 per issue including back numbers where available) The Scientific Instrument Society is a Registered Charity No. 326733. Editor's Page Collections: Cabinets and Curios relevant one for our purposes, is Greenwich harbours both cabinet and pinpointed by A.V. Simcock in his curio collections - e.g., from the The dispersal of two collections of essay "A Dodo in the Ark" in Robert T. Barberini family in the 17th century scientific instruments in the past few Gunther and the Old Ashmolean (to be •nd from G.H. Gabb in the 20th. months- part of the Frank collection •t reviewed in the next issue of the Sotheby's Bond Street and part of the Bu//etin): "Interest in collecting Historically, then, collections which Zallinger cabinet •t Christie's South antique scientific instruments... have not been dispersed for whatever Kensington - invites comment on the emerged with the rise of • European reason can and do serve as nuclei for some of our greatest museums. But more general question. Should concept of 'industrial art' during the many newer museums, especially collections carefully assembled by • Industrial Revolution, and the discerning collector over many years consequent establishment of museum though not exclusively outside be kept intact? Are there reliable collections of 'applied •It' whose role Europe, spring up without the benefit of such collections; after all, with funds criteria for such a decision? Or does it was to educate and broaden the minds and discernment one can build up • not really matter so long as the of designers and craftsmen." The very creditable collection through individual instruments are well obvious example, •gain in Oxford, is gradual acquisition on the open preserved? the collection of Lewis Evans: offered market. So we return to the initial to Oxford in 1922, it became the The urge to collect instruments has at question, slightly refrained: does it foundation stone for the Museum of least four roots, one generic and three matter whether collections of the History of Science (MHSO). This historical. The generic impetus stems instruments are dispersed since in the superb collection was further from nothing less than the primitive fullness of time roughly equivalent enhanced by the addition of 153 hoarding instinct, one which is for that collections can be re-assembled? matter not unique to Homo sapiens. instruments donated by J.A. Billmeir The first historical roots reach back to in 1957 (among others). By way of an answer, let us return to the Renaissance when "royal Simcock's useful distinction between There is another, and quite different, cabinets', and subsequently "cabinets instruments as archaeology and approach to 19th- and 20th-century instruments as relics of industrial art. of curiosities", came into vogue. For instrument collecting although cabinet read collection, be it of art or The key justification for cohesion over superficially it fits Simcock's precious stones or exotic flora or curios dispersal must surely be that the description just •s well. This archaeological evidence not be - in some cases all of these and more. alternative approach Simcock qualifies destroyed. A collection of fossils - as archaeology, and he sees Robert however discerning, voluminous, well The initial function of the cabinet at Gunther, first curator of the MHSO, in documented - cannot hold an the hands of the Medici princes or the this light. He contrasts Evans and archaeologist's candle to • cache of Elector of Saxony, as Gerard Turner Gunther, respectively, •s "the collector related bones found in siha in the tells us in • concise and inform•tire whose hunting ground is the sale- OIduv•i Gorge. It is historical sacrilege essay in Ann•Is o[5cience (voi. 41, p. room and the archaeologist whose to scatter instruments whose context 165 [1984]), was self-advertisement, hunting ground is the laboratory and and content could of themselves together with intellectual and aesthetic the college cupboard." So on the one further "the study of the Archaeology satisfaction. But the purpose of the hand we have collections of objets of Science", in Gunther's words. Non- cabinet of curiosities, or d'•rt, sacred relics, even curios; on the arbitrary relationships arise between "wunderkammer", was rather other, of apparatus assembled in the the scientist and his laboratory different: it culled the fruits of context of the research laboratory. equipment (consider Michael Faraday exploration and experiment to exhibit and his electrical experiments •t the items of wonder and rarity, whether The great merit of both types of collection in stimulating the Royal Institution, the Curie Museum wrought by nature or by man. One in Paris or the Rbntgenmuseum in example, the "closet of rarities" of the foundation of museums is undeniable. For "archaeological" collections we Remscheid), the lecturer and his Tradesc•nts father and son, led to the teaching apparatus (e.g., the Natural founding of the Ashmolean Museum would expect universities to provide the right environment, witness the Philosophy Class Collection at the in Oxford in 1683; a later one collected Royal Museum of Scotland •s by Sir Hans Sloane, to that of the Apparatus Collection derived from the Philosophy Chamber •t Harvard, the employed by Robison, Forbes and Tait British Museum in 1759. Even •t this at the University of Edinburgh), the early stage • few scientific instruments teaching instruments collated by William Swan at St. Andrews, the institution and its sui generis found their way into cabinets, such as instruments (the astronomical instru- the "shtety', • Russian abacus, among combined material of the Physics Department and the Natuurkundig ments at the Beijing Observatory Tradescant's rarities and also the constructed for K'ang Hsi in the 1670s Countess of Westmorland's magnet. Gezelschap •t Utrecht, the Garland collection •t V•nderbilt, the teaching under the guidance of Ferdinand The few surviving historical cabinets VerblesS, SJ). Similarly, the are invaluable to the historian of collection •t Pavia. "Sacred relic" collections have also instigated preservation of 18th-century cabinets science: first and foremost the Van reveals historical information from the M•rum collection at Teyler's Museum museums; the 105 instruments of Franti~k Fi•la, for instance, which in ensemble which cannot be inferred in Haarlem but also the George 111 from the individual constituents. collection at the Science Museum, 1908 launched the National Technical museum in Prague. Naturally, many Hauch's cabinet at Sore Akademi and Collectors' motives •re manifold: are hybrids: Cambridge owes the the apparatus •t the Catholic Seminary conservation and analysis for the contents of its museum to the of Kremsmunster inter adia. It is scholar, the diversion of bygone dispiriting to reflect on the many munificence of R.S. Whipple, who instruments for • modern practitioner cabinets long since sold and scattered, presented his collection of early (doctors make avid collectors of notably those of Bonnier de la Mosson instruments to the University in 1944, medical instruments), the sheer but also to the transfer of apparatus in 1745 and of the Fad of Bute in 1793. pie•sure of collecting. Start a from various scientific departments. collection, wrote Balzac in Le Cousin The other historical root, the most The National Maritime Museum, Pons, and you will enjoy the coin of Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society No. 9 (1986) happiness in ~inall change (or words to virtually to the lees. The nectar was antique microscopes in Mi~pe~, that effect). The archaeologist of sold for scrap years ago (see "Market- vol. 34, p. 345 [19821). Furthermore, .~lence will nevertheless learn little place" in this Bulletin). instruments of potential archaeo- "-,,m .uch aggregations. To see the logical interest may be intrinsically cr:',~t ~ ,,liect~on at Ssr John Findlay sold The issue is not really so simple as the uncolIectable, as in the case of an '-~ >,,:hcbv's m I~hI-62 and the Linton above argument implies. On the one explorer or a roving scientist. Co',!e,hon by the Nouveau Drouot in hand, collections with little or no :~ "~ ,~av have been painful to some "archaeological" significance have The most potent argument for the ~ar,~le ~, but no :rretrivable harm was escaped dissemination through instrumental diaspora is finally the ~d,~ted on the hi~to~" of science. outright donation to a willing museum commercial market. Just as leaves from ,Moreuver, the catalogues of these Ithe Landau collection at the Louvres), a psaltery fetch far more than the uncut collections record such historical through the terms of bequests and tome could command, instruments evidence as a future investigator is legacies (the Wellcome Collection of tend to be worth more individually hkelv to want ) I would argue that the medical instruments - although its than collectively. Collectors may have a piecemeal sale of the Frank collection, very magnitude makes it a special natural desire to see their corpus of not en bhR" as he had dearly wanted, is case), or through the determination of instruments, assembled with such no more reprehensible. (The "Frank the vendor (the Malassis collection of devotion and tenacity, enshrined in Collection" is in any case something of mathematical instruments, now at IBM perpetuity.
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