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!
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.
Verge watch, London, c.1750 (Inv. 52706). Although this watch is more than 200 years old, its face is incredibly similar to those we wear today.
Name: Daniel
Occupation: Student
Object: Analogue watch
Story: I recently received a watch, from a loved one, as a gift. I adore it, it is bluff and appealing. However, something more then that attracts me to it. It tells the time just like another watch I’ve seen, the one in the picture displayed, and that watch is hundreds of years old. Put simply, I love the somewhat sentimental thought that time today is as time yesterday and time tomorrow.
I hope that this object won’t one day merely be one of purely historical interest. To my mind, the analogue watch or, it as I prefer to call it, the watch is one of those special scientific objects which cannot be improved upon if it is to retain its natural character. That is to say, it cannot be added to in function if is to remain, simply, a timepiece. The essence of the watch is demeaned and betrayed by throwing in bells and whistles, weather-dials, musical output and whatever other flight of fancy take a modern designer’s mind.
A standard 12 point circular display is, truly, a thing of beauty but it is more than that: it is a constant link to our collective past. Such a face tells the time as Dickens saw it as he wrote long into the night, as Churchill glimpsed it whilst toiling under London when Britain stood alone, as Big Ben displayed and displays it to all as eras passed and new sun’s rise. In our time when we are increasingly driven by the unceasing demand for quantifiable progress in each aspect of our yet more corporate world, and in which each minute seems to be worth more than the last, there is something deeply reassuring in seeing time as our forebears saw it and remembering that for us, as them, a minute hasn’t changed.
This is the planisphere Peter uses, it looks very different to the Museum’s one at the bottom of the post! The big dipper can be seen to the right of the pole star.
Name: Peter
Age: Ancient
From: Oxford
Object: Planisphere
Story: My modern planisphere is shown in the photo above. The brass rivet at its centre marks the position of the pole star. Because the Earth rotates daily, all stars seem to revolve about the pole star. By setting the date and time a planisphere shows which stars are visible in the night sky.
I like it because it can also be used in reverse, like a nocturnal, to tell the time at night:
Celestial Planisphere, London, Early 19th Century (Inv. 40743). This planisphere from the Museum’s collections is about 200 years old!