Hand-Held Refracting Telescope, English, 18th Century (Inv. 52178) This telescope is over 200 years old, do you think it would survive being dropped like the one Callum has?
Name: Callum
Age: 9
Occupation: School
From: Wolverhampton
Object: Telescope
Story: I was looking through my telescope when Venus came out. I was busy watching it and accidentally knocked my telescope over, it landed on my head and it was quite painful.
Safety Scalpel, Late 17th Century (Inv. 44746) Do you think this decorated scalpel from the Museum’s collections might have been better than Elizabeth’s scissors?
Name: Elizabeth
Age: 9
Occupation: School
From: England
Object: Cow’s eye ball
Story: When I was at home my mother brung home a cow’s eyeball. We dissected it at the table on a plate. We had to cut it open with scissors because we didn’t have a scalpel.
Have you seen a Velella velella like the one above? Photo credit: Velella velella by Daniel Neal (License)
Name: Jonathan
Age: 50
Occupation: Oceanographer
From: Southport
Object: Velella
Story: When I was about 11 I went on a ship with my family (my father was in the merchant navy). On passage across the Pacific we spent a few days moving through huge swarms of Velella – small jellyfish-like things, thousands and thousands of them on the sea surface. We managed to catch some with a bucket (not easy from a large ship doing 15 knots). I sketched them and measured them, and now I study the physics and biology of the ocean.
Photograph of Beetle on a Leaf, early 20th Century (Inv. 31584). Do you think Freddie’s beetle was anything like this?
Name: Freddie
Age: 5
Occupation: School
Object: Beetle
Story: Yesterday in a bucket in the garden was a beetle. We thought it had a green grape in its moth. But we noticed the green was, we think, its head. We emptied the bucket and photographed it. We are going to send the picture to the Museum of Natural History.
Like Freddie, you can send your questions to museums which specialise in that area and they will try their best to answer!
Alyson saw patterns like this through the kaleidoscope at our weekend event! Photo credit: Kaleidoscope-on-blue by Song_sing (license)
Name: Alyson
Age: 6
Occupation: School
From: Northamptonshire
Object: Kaleidoscope
Story: There was a different pattern when I moved it around, they looked funny. I used the rocks to make my very own pattern and that was very pretty and funny. One pink, blue and brown rocks. I liked it lots it was fun.
Advertisement on ‘Method of using the admired Kaleidoscope…’ 19th Century (Inv. 13844) This advert is from the Museum’s archives, would it convince you to buy the kaleidoscope?
Cine Kodak Camera, by Kodak, 1940s (Inv. 37261) This camera is very similar to the one used at the Museum’s event which Sophie attended.
Name: Sophia
Age: 4
Occupation: Work from home making a mess!
From: Oxford
Object: Camera
Story: Today I learned about old cameras – it was very exciting! Very different to an iPhone! I got to grips with it quickly and took a pretend photo of my mummy and daddy. I found the museum workshop very interesting.
Two-Day Marine Chronometer, c. 1840 (Inv. 38217) ‘Chronometer’ is the title given to clocks accurate enough to be used at sea. This one comes from the Museum’s collections, we wonder if it was similar to those Catilin saw at the Greenwich Maritime Museum.
Name: Caitlin
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
From: Kent
Object: Nautical Clock
Story: When I was about 8 I went to Greenwich Maritime Museum with my parents. They spent ages explaining how the clocks has helped sailors navigate the globe, which I found really boring. Their lecture was rewarded a few weeks later when my school held a science competition and my essay on how the nautical clocks at Greenwich helped sailors travel the work won me first prize – a book on science, a box of magnets and a huge bag of sweets (which lasted far longer than the book!).
Rat Operating Table, Mid-20th Century (Inv. 47402). Historically, this would have been used for similar dissections to the one Jessica’s saw.
Name: Jessica
Age: 11
Occupation: School girl
From: Berkshire, UK
Object: Pig eye!
Story: I remember when I was eight I came to The Museum of the History of Science and I saw a lady dissecting a pig eyeball! I was so fascinated. Since then I have kept coming back and I love finding all these new things here!
Orrery, by Thomas Wright, c. 1731 (Inv. 35757) It is thought that this orrery was owned by Charles Boyle. It is kept in the basement of the Museum, come see it when you next visit!
Name: Charles Boyle, Fourth Earl of Orrery
Dates: 1674-1731
Occupation: Politician
Object: Orrery, by Thomas Wright, London, c. 1731 (Inv. 35757)
Story: The importance of Charles Boyle, Fourth Earl of Orrery, in the history of science is perhaps most simply captured by his name and his title. His surname – Boyle – points to his relation to the esteemed seventeenth-century natural philosopher Robert Boyle, who is associated with the air pump. His title – Earl of Orrery – points to his own contributions to science and natural philosophy, which were so widely recognised that the orrery, an astronomical device used to model the solar system and pictured above, was named after him.
Born to nobility in 1674, Charles Boyle was raised in a household that valued science and learning. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1694, before launching his career in the army and as a statesman. Until 1699 he served as a representative in the Irish Parliament and later became a M.P. for Huntingdon.
Gregorian Reflecting Telescope with Stand, c. 1710 (Inv. 20020). This object is one of many within the Orrery Collection at the Museum.
Professionally, Boyle was firmly a statesman: he performed no seminal experiments, and he has no scientific discoveries to his name. What made Boyle an amateur scientist, therefore, had less to do with the things he did and more to do with the things he had – his collection of scientific instruments ranked among the finest in England. The collection included everything from glass specimens for use with a microscope to Gregorian reflecting telescopes, and Boyle, driven by a deep personal interest in the sciences, went great lengths in amassing and tending to the collection. As a result of his success as an amateur collector, Boyle was named a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1706.
Along with science, Boyle also pursued writing and even published a play called As You Find It. During his eventful life Boyle was, for a short time, imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1722 as he was suspected of treason and being apart of the Jacobite Atterbury Plot. However, no evidence was found and he was released on bail before being discharged.
Boyle is highly representative of scientific amateurs of his time, most of whom came from backgrounds of wealth and nobility, only dabbling in science and natural philosophy of out of personal interest. Even among amateurs, scientific activities during this time were predominantly confined to those with ample time and resources at their disposal. Boyle serves as a good starting point for understanding how the status of the amateur scientist became available to wider segments of the population over the following centuries.
By Andrew Lea
Name: Jack
Dates: 1927 – 1990
Occupation: Engineer
Object: A home-built Telescope
Story: In 1963 Jack made a Newtonian reflecting telescope, with a primary mirror 32 cm in diameter and having a focal length of 203 cm. Despite its poor location in the suburbs of London, some very useful observations were made with it. Two examples are given here.
Pencil drawing of Jupiter by Jack.
A. Jupiter
Above is a pencil drawing of Jupiter made by Jack on 20 March 1966. The planet is a gas giant that rotates on its axis in just less than ten hours. This causes it to be flattened at the poles and means that drawings have to be made quickly. The Great Red Spot seen in the image is a vast storm that was first identified in 1665 – it is comparable in size with the Earth! The black dot, that just happens to be seen here inside the Red Spot, is the shadow of one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, which was discovered by Galileo. Along with every drawing, Jack made detailed notes about the position of each atmospheric feature seen on the planet’s disc.
B. Apollo 12 en route to the Moon
This unique observation requires a little explanation describing the sequence of events. The final stage of the Saturn-V rocket fired the Apollo 12 spacecraft out of its Earth orbit and on its way towards the Moon. Up to this point the Lunar Module, which was to touch-down on the Moon, was still stowed behind the Apollo spacecraft, protected by four panels. Apollo thus had to manoeuvre to pick up the Lunar Module and finally separate from the rocket. During the course of this, the four protective panels were jettisoned, and afterwards the remainder of the Saturn-V rocket, whose task was now complete, was sent into orbit around the sun. These two artistic concepts below (from NASA) illustrate these events:
The observation, made by Jack (on 14 November 1969, between 21:25 and 22:26 Universal Time), took place less than an hour after these happenings, and is reconstructed in the sketch below, which is based on his extensive notes.
Sketch of Jack’s observations of Apollo 12 on route to the moon, reconstructed from his notes.
O2 is a cloud of liquid oxygen, released in the course of the manoeuvre. R is the Saturn-V rocket final-stage, which had finished its task. M is the Apollo spacecraft, now including the Lunar Module: it was amazing to think that it contained three astronauts already en route to the Moon. R and M were just points of light, and all of the items in the sketch moved together rapidly in relation to the fixed stars.
A, B and C were lights that flashed irregularly about once every 5 to 10 seconds. At first Jack was puzzled about this, but he then realised that these were three out of the four covers that had protected the Lunar Module.
Jack also build a model observatory, complete with a motorised framework, which you can read about here.
Special thanks to Peter at the Museum of the History of Science for providing this amazing story and the images which accompany it.