Stories from the stores

One year, two hundred stories

July 31st, 2010 | by | meta

Jul
31

Stories From The Stores is one year old today. Woo hoo!

Over the past twelve months, we’ve told 200 stories about science, technology, engineering and medicine as captured in our remarkable collections of objects, pictures, books and archives.

Our history – your history and mine – is embedded in the objects we’ve invented, made and used. Time flies, and we might forget this history if we didn’t collect stuff. Here, for instance, is a state-of-the-art aircraft flight exactly a century ago:

'Mr Gibbs Making an Evening Flight', July 1910 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

Wonderful image – and worth remembering if you’re jetting off for a foreign holiday this summer. We’ve come a long way in a short time.

Here’s to the coming year – lots more stories from the Science Museum stores!

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Remember that you must die…

July 30th, 2010 | by | medicine

Jul
30

Its a worrying title for a blog, but ‘remember that you must die’ or ‘memento mori’ in Latin, was a common saying that our historical counterparts took to heart. Popular from the 16th to the 19th centuries, memento moris can can be anything from pocket watches, pendants, rings, ribbon slides, even statues and walking sticks. Some carried a lock of hair from a departed loved one, woven into a scene. Most show skeletons, skulls or coffins and – not for the faint-hearted - decaying corpses.

Memento mori, England, 1810-1850 (A78828, Science Museum, London)

Most of these items are in our store, but they recently got a rare outing, many of them for the first time. The Rubin Museum of Art in New York held an exhibition Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Culture bringing together their own fabulous collection of Himalayan art with Western material culture.

My favourite object that went on loan was this:

Pocket watch, 1700-1930 (A103905, Science Museum, London)

A watch could not be a more perfect reminder of the shortness of life. On the watch face is a small inscription meaning ‘time flies’ to hammer the message home. The thing that makes this object even more remarkable is it that it was once owned by Queen Mary, wife of British monarch George V. She presented it to Henry Wellcome at Buckingham Palace in 1931 to add to his enormous collection.

Much to my colleagues’ envy, I’ve been asked to courier the loan back to Britain. Loans take a lot of organising, the lions’ share by our Collections Registry and Conservation teams. But couriering is not glamorous - there’s a lot of waiting around in cargo sheds at 5am and once you’ve seen one aircraft hanger, you’ve seen them all. I must admit I will be keeping to myself that I’m travelling with memento moris so not to scare the more nervous flyers….

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Last chance to see: Thomas Harriot

July 29th, 2010 | by | astronomy, exhibitions

Jul
29

Monday marked 401 years since Thomas Harriot made the first recorded astronomical observation with a telescope - so one year since we opened our Cosmos & Culture exhibition celebrating Harriot and other astronomers.

For the last year, we’ve been lucky enough to have some of Harriot’s drawings on display, but for their long-term preservation it’s time to remove them from the light. This weekend is your last chance to see the centuries-old originals before we return them to their owner’s care and replace them with facsimiles.

Harriot’s first drawing of our Moon pre-dates any other telescopic observations. But Galileo beat him to it in discovering moons around Jupiter. Harriot probably read Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius around July, but by then Jupiter was too near the Sun for him to check it out. This drawing shows his first observations of the moons in autumn 1610. The first night wasn’t too successful – he noted, ‘I saw but one, and that above’ – but over the next year he made 98 further observations and tracked all four Galilean satellites.

Harriot tracks the Galilean satellites (Lord Egremont/West Sussex Record Office, used with permission)

By winter Harriot had turned his telescope on the Sun, risking blindness by viewing it directly with only mist to shield its fierce glare. In December 1610 he saw sunspots – one of several astronomers to independently discover them around the same time.

Harriot notes 'three blacke spots' on the Sun (Lord Egremont / West Sussex Record Office, used with permisson).

So with all these achievements, why isn’t Harriot as famous as Galileo? Well, unlike his Italian counterpart he already had rich patrons, so didn’t need to publish his work to attract sponsors. He may have also preferred to keep a low profile after a brief stint in prison as a Gunpowder Plot suspect. After his death, his astronomical papers lay undiscovered for over 150 years, so not many people have seen them in the last four centuries. If you’re in London this week, take a good look while you still can.

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Space Debris

July 28th, 2010 | by | communication, engineering, materials, space

Jul
28

X3/Prospero thermal surfaces experiment

X3/Prospero thermal surfaces experiment (Doug Millard, 2005)

This box contains a flight spare set of experimental surfaces for the Prospero satellite that was launched in 1971. They were designed to tell scientists more about how different satellite materials and finishes – matt, shiny etc, would behave in the temperature extremes of space.

It has always reminded me of a much larger experiment flown by NASA (LDEF - which stands for Long Duration Exposure Facility) that was covered with all sorts of equivalent surfaces.

LDEF satellite during its six year stay in orbit

LDEF satellite during its six year stay in orbit (NASA)

The LDEF was brought back to Earth in the Shuttle and scientists discovered that its surfaces were covered with impact craters from micro-meteoroids.

Micro-meteoroid impact crater on the LDEF satellite

Micro-meteoroid impact crater on the LDEF satellite (NASA)

That was back in the 1980s but if the mission were to be repeated now it would almost certainly suffer many more collisions from the bits of space debris that we have put up there. There are thousands upon thousands of pieces of rocket and spacecraft circling Earth and it is becoming a big problem for satellite operators.

Computer representation of just some of the debris pieces orbiting Earth

Computer representation of just some of the debris pieces orbiting Earth (NASA)

At a meeting last week Air Commodore Stuart Evans RAF, Head of Joint Doctrine, Air and Space, DCDC, pointed out that ‘all nine sectors of the UK’s critical national infrastructure (communications, emergency services, government and public services, finance, energy, food, health, transport and water) all rely, to a greater or lesser degree, on space.

What to do about the debris problem, then? There is no simple answer at the moment and all the space players can do is ensure as little new debris is created as possible.

Prospero is still in orbit and next October scientists hope to re-contact it for its 40th anniversary. They won’t be able to examine those experimental surfaces but if they could I wonder what state they would be in now!

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