Stories from the stores

What would you do on your perfect bank holiday Monday? Well I don’t know about you guys, but as a kid I always dreamt about owning a Lotus and going for drive in the country.

Lotus Elan (Wikipedia)

The Lotus Elan was originally conceived by Ron Hickman, the director of Lotus Engineering, in 1963. It was a deeply covetable sport car available in two models – one with fixed position head lights and the other with drop-heads.

If the Lotus Elan is the dream, the reality of the bank holiday tends to be a little different – DIY. My dad was a builder and I remember him getting a Black and Decker workmate one Christmas.  He used that thing almost to destruction and I learnt a few carpentry skills on it as well.

I think mum liked it as well as it saved our chairs from being used as saw horses.

This is exactly what motivated the inventor of the workmate, the very same Ron Hickman who came up with the Lotus Elan, after he sawed into a Windsor chair! We have an early version right here in our collection. I can’t explain the excitement when I saw it for the first time and the flashbacks it triggered.

Folding joiner's work bench, c 1969 (Science Museum)

I love the fact that the designer of a high-end sport car also invented such a critical aid for the everyday man.

Towards the close of 1837 Patrick Murphy announced that January 20^th would be the coldest day of the coming year. The day duly arrived and bitter cold confirmed the prediction. Booksellers were besieged by hordes of people demanding copies of Murphy’s Weather Almanac, which contained predictions for the whole year based on planetary and lunar influences. Murphy made his name as a weather prophet and a small fortune too, but he didn’t escape criticism.     

This satirical cartoon references a comic play, in which a learned gentleman mistakes a potato seller named Murphy for the famous meteorologist. The telescope, moon and stars are references to Murphy's astrometeorological theories. (Science Museum / Science & Society)

To some, astrological almanacs simply betrayed the credulity of the British public. However in the 19th century ’scientific’ and ‘non-scientific’ understandings of weather were not clearly distinguished.  

Take Robert Fitzroy. Better known as the captain of HMS Beagle, the fellow of the Royal Society headed the newly formed Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade (later the Meteorological Office) from 1854. Fitzroy was no astrologist but he did speculate that the moon influenced atmospheric conditions. And many shared his hope that, with sufficient data, predicting the weather might one day become as reliable as predicting the motions of the heavens.   

Fitzroy’s Department had two aims: collecting ‘accurate and digested observations for the future use of men of science’ and, more practically, aiding navigation. Fitzroy supplied instruments and charts to ships’ Captains, who in return sent meteorological data back to London. He also loaned barometers to coastal villages to help fishermen plan their work safely.       

Fitzroy storm barometer, c. 1880 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

Using telegraphy, Fitzroy gathered daily reports from a growing network of British and European observers. From 1861 he used this data to produce the first ’forecasts’, which were printed in the newspapers. They were eagerly consumed. However, some members of the scientific establishment worried that they blurred the boundaries between elite and popular forms of knowledge making.   

In 1866, following Fitzroy’s death, an official report found that ”the truth of [Fitzroy's forecasts] is warranted neither by science nor by experience”. Like Murphy’s almanac, they caused the public “to confuse real knowledge with ill founded pretences” and threatened the reputation of “true science”.  Against considerable resistance, the service was cancelled and for a time weather prediction was left to the successors of Patrick Murphy and his fellow weather prophets.

As you read this, I’m away on a short break, taking my first holiday on a canal boat with some friends.

Canals can tell us a great deal about our history and our national identity. This scene, on show in the ‘British small craft’ display in our shipping gallery, contrasts the old and the new on Britain’s inland waterways in the 1960s:

Canal boats display, Science Museum (David Rooney)

A working barge features in the foreground, while a (then) modern canal cruiser sits behind.

This shift of use, from haulage to leisure, is a fascinating story in Britain’s marine history, and the rest of the display similarly sheds light on how we felt about our coastal identity back in the 60s, and how it sat in wider culture.

British Transport Films cameraman filming canal boat, 1950 (NRM / BTF / Science & Society)

We’ve got a really interesting vacancy at the moment. If you’re thinking of starting a PhD, we’ve got funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council to pay for a doctoral student to study our British small craft display.

You can find out more about the project, being run jointly between the University of Nottingham’s geography department and ourselves, here.

If you’re interested, please contact Professor David Matless at Nottingham for an informal discussion. Closing date for applications is Friday 4 June, with interviews being held at the Science Museum on Thursday 17 June.

Meanwhile, if I haven’t accidentally fallen in the Kennet & Avon canal, I’ll be back in London next week. Now, does anyone know how to steer this thing?

I set out to the National Physical Laboratory the other day and on my way down Exhibition Road passed an elephant.

Elephant Family appeal, Exhibition Road, 2010 (Doug Millard)

Some 250 of these colourful models are being positioned across London to raise awareness and funds for the plight of their living cousins. A little later something niggled at the back of my mind – as though that elephant was trying to tell me something – but I thought no more of it and caught a train for Teddington and the NPL.

This, I’m ashamed to say, was my first visit to the Laboratory, also known as the National Measurement Institute, where, for over a century, physical standards have been measured, studied, applied or all three.

Scientists at the NPL, 1932 (Science Museum/Science & Society)

It was International Metrology Day, May 20^th - exactly 135 years since seventeen nations agreed to the metre as the fundamental unit of length. The original Metre, made from platinum and iridium, is housed in Paris but the NPL has one of the carefully guarded official copies. These days a Metre is defined by the distance light travels in a vacuum during 1/299 792 458 of a second.

NPL also does a lot on sound - acoustics - and I was particularly impressed by the Laboratory’s anechoic chambers.

Science of Acoustics, 1850 (Science Museum/Science & Society)

Now, while the Science Museum has all sorts of acoustics objects and pictures in its collections it has nothing like the NPL’s rather fearsome looking chambers where sounds produce no echo; here’s a link to one of the NPL’s anechoic chambers in action.

NPL Anechoic Chamber, 2010 (Crown)

The NPL studies all manner of sounds, those the human ear can readily detect but also those at too high a frequency for us to hear – ultrasonic – or too low – infrasonic. Other animals are different, though: elephants, for example, have been shown to communicate using really low frequencies. Scientists suggest that this allows them to coordinate their own movements over distances of many kilometres. Maybe the Exhibition Road elephant was trying to tell me something earlier that day.

18th century caricature showing three corrupt doctors (Science Museum / Science & Society)

The Greek authorities recently named and shamed a number of tax-avoiding doctors. A move that is perhaps more revealing of blame-shifting than an indication that the profession is morally suspect. Not that doctors are always the saints we’d like them to be. Just because they’ve taken the Hippocratic Oath, doesn’t mean they’re going to stick to it.

Buried within our vast and varied medical collections are a number of objects associated with good doctors that turned (very) bad.

Photographs and letters relating to Dr Neill Cream (Science Museum)

Dr Neill Cream appears quite the dapper Victorian gentleman doctor. Born 160 years ago, on May 27, he was trained at prestigious medical schools in London and Edinburgh. But his charm and appearance belied his true character – a backstreet abortionist drawn to London’s sordid underbelly. Nicknamed the ‘Lambeth Poisoner’, he was hanged for a series of murders. His alleged cry of “I am Jack…” as the rope went taut would tantalize generations of Ripper enthusiasts. The letter, sent to his fiancée from prison, contains declarations of innocence – and a plea for an alibi.

Dr William Palmer's cigar case and cigar (Science Museum)

An even more infamous doctor once owned this cigar case – complete with unsmoked cigar. Dr William Palmer, aka the ‘Prince of Poisoners’, was one of the 19^th century’s most notorious characters. Better suited to a life of drink and gambling than healing, Palmer was convicted of a single murder after a sensational trial. However, it is believed he poisoned many more – including his own children and other relatives. He was hanged in front of a crowd of some 30,000 in 1856, but lives on in the enduring pub refrain of ‘what’s your poison?’, believed to be inspired by his exploits.

Compared to Cream and Palmer, those Greek doctors seem paragons of virtue.

One of the most curious meteorology objects I’ve discovered recently is the weather glass. It was first described in 1558 by the Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta.    

Giambattista Della Porta (c.1535-1615) surrounded by representations of his many interests, which included natural history, astrology, alchemy, mathematics and natural philosophy (Science Museum Library / Science & Society)

Della Porta’s apparatus was essentially the same as the air thermoscope, which I wrote about a recently. The alternative design shown below was in use from the 1600s. As the air in the vessel expands and contracts water moves up and down the spout, indicating changing atmospheric conditions. 

Weather glass, 1700-1900 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

Before air pressure was understood, the instrument was sometimes called a perpetuum mobile – perpetual motion – because the water level fluctuated with no known cause.

The English physician and mystic Robert Fludd (1574-1637) interpreted the weather glass as a ‘key to two worlds’. For him, it was a microcosmic symbol of the universe and a model for the human body. Others claimed that it could predict the weather days, weeks or even months in advance.  

By the 1660s leading experimental philosophers, who had recently begun to distinguish between temperature and air pressure and to use the thermometer and barometer respectively to measure them, tended to dismiss the weather glass since it responded to both variables.

However, it remained attractive for domestic use due to its simplicity, and portability: one maker claimed in 1917 that his was ‘More Sensitive than the Most Perfect Barometer’. Weather glasses can be bought on ebay and are still popular with amateur weather forecasters today. 

And whilst Fludd’s occult philosophy fell out of favour, some of his ideas persisted. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s many people continued to regard the weather glass and the barometer as reflections of the human body and psyche, since instruments and humans were both influenced by atmospheric conditions. 

Around 1710, John Patrick advertised this barometer/mirror combination, encouraging users to dress for the weather and perhaps reflect on the air's influence on their own health or mood (Science Museum / Science & Society)

Many seventeen-year-olds become very familiar with the world of insurance as they pick up the keys for their first hot hatch…

VW Golf, 1975 (David Rooney)

Few of us think about the system that sits behind our insurance policies, but everything in the transport world plays its part in a network of brokers, underwriters, syndicates and financiers – from passenger jets to fleets of reps, container ships to communication satellites.

Intelsat 6 communication satellite, 1989 (NASA / Science & Society)

Transport pioneers have long needed the services of insurers. One item in our archive is a 1907 insurance policy from Lloyd’s, ‘on the life of Charles C. Turner from the time of leaving earth at Crystal Palace in a balloon’.

Turner made it to Sweden and survived, which must have been a relief back in the Lloyd’s underwriting room at the Royal Exchange, London…

Royal Exchange, London, c.1905 (NMeM / RPS / Science & Society)

A few days ago, our space curator Doug Millard organised a staff trip to meet a group of space technology insurers at Lloyd’s. Part of the visit included a tour of the remarkable building itself, designed by Richard Rogers and opened in 1986.

Lloyd's building, 2010 (David Rooney)

The building is amazing! The services hang on the outside, leaving the interior a vast volume uninterrupted by service ducts and lift-shafts.

Lloyd's underwriting room, 2010 (David Rooney)

The building’s scale befits the world of global risk-taking. But the work itself – brokers seeking insurance for their clients, meeting underwriters who’ll back the risk – is carried out face-to-face, as in the seventeenth-century coffee shop of Edward Lloyd, where the business started.

Back in 1907, Charles Turner’s broker sat with a Lloyd’s underwriter at a desk just like these in a building not far away…

I stumbled across an old Monty Python sketch the other day that plays with words pleasing to the ear (‘woody’) or displeasing (‘tinny’). I chortled (nice woody word) but then started thinking about wood and science - we don’t often associate the two and we’re culturally conditioned to associate wood with words like ‘old’:

Roe Triplane at Lea Marshes, 1909 (Science Museum/Science & Society)

and ‘amateur’;

Man Sawing Wood, 1997 (Science Museum/Science & society)

But appearances can be deceptive as the Mosquito aircraft demonstrated. It may have resembled its alloy contemporaries of World War 2 but its sleek exterior cloaked a strong, lightweight structure of balsa, birch and spruce.

And the very obviously metallic masts and aerials of Rugby Radio Station, long standing landmark twixt the A5 and M1, relied on a hidden, cathedral of wood – the Linden or Lime Wood-supporting structure for the transmitter’s tuning coil assembly.

Rugby Radio Station’s Very Low Frequency Tuning Coil Assembly, 2004, (Science Museum).

And lest we think of the space age as an era of quintessentially expensive and exotic materials we should remember that Apollo astronauts needed cork to get to the Moon (it lined the boost protective cover that protected their command module and windows should the launch escape system be used),

Apollo Launch Escape System, 1968 (NASA)

and that China’s Fanhui Shei Weixing reconnaissance satellite had oak in its heat shield to help it ablate (burn away and dissipate the heat of atmospheric re-entry).

Fifty years ago yesterday, Theodore Maiman demonstrated the first working laser. At the time, there didn’t seem an obvious use for the technology (although several newspapers ran fanciful stories about ‘death rays’) and it was dubbed ‘a solution looking for a problem‘. Five decades on, lasers are so widespread that we barely notice our everyday encounters with them at the office printer, the supermarket barcode scanner, or the DVD player at home.

DVDs are written and read by laser. (Science Museum)

The basic principle of a laser is pumping energy into a medium to excite its atoms so that they emit photons of light, then amplifying and aligning this emission. The first lasers used ruby rods as the medium – here’s an explanation of how a ruby laser works.

The chamber of this early laser is opened so that you can see the ruby rod. (Science Museum)

Since then a huge variety of materials has been used in lasers including gold, organic dyes, semiconductors, and gases like helium-neon (the common red laser) and carbon dioxide, widely used for industrial cutting and welding. Or, more weirdly, lasers have even been made from jelly!

The world's first Transversely Excited Atmospheric laser, built at Baldock in 1974, uses a cylinder of carbon dioxide as the medium. (Science Museum)

As well as the now-familiar everyday uses, lasers are increasingly used in medicine. Laser guide stars have helped sharpen the view of major telescopes. Laser weaponry is moving out of the world of James Bond and into reality. One day, lasers might even be used for fusion, providing us with plentiful clean energy. For a more detailed take on the laser’s fascinating history and promising future, check out the special anniversary edition of Physics World. Here’s to the next fifty years.

Did anyone catch ‘Britain’s Greatest Machines’ on Five last Thursday? Chris Barrie is presenting a series looking at the evolution of engineering in Britain, directed by science documentarist Martin Gorst.

Much of what was talked about in the first episode, covering the 1910s, is represented (as you might expect) in the Science Museum’s collections. Back then we’d just become a fledgling museum in our own right and we were hungry to collect the very latest machines and inventions.

In the show, you see a Morgan three-wheeled cycle-car. At our store in Wroughton we’ve got this rather lovely 1914 model…

Morgan cycle-car, 1914 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

Chris Barrie watched a replica of the Vickers ‘Vimy’ that crossed the Atlantic in 1919 with John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown. See the original in our Flight gallery…

Vickers 'Vimy', 1919 (Science Museum / Science & Society)

And in our Making the Modern World gallery you can see a First-World-War Vickers machine gun like the one in the programme, alongside a model of a British Mark IV tank from 1917.

British Mark IV tank, France, c.1918 (NMeM / Daily Herald Archive / Science & Society)

There are lots more than I can fit in here so why not watch the first episode on Demand Five here and then pop down to the Museum to see what you spot.

And if you want to find out more about the story of the Museum, we’ve just launched a new book, Science For The Nation: Perspectives on the History of the Science Museum. A remarkable institution – and an extraordinary century of machines.