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.

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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.

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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!

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Compound Monocular Microscope (Inv. 35972)

Name: Mallainee

Little daphnia under a microscope. Photo credit: Daphnies by Thomas Bresson (license)

Age: 22

From: Toowoomba, Australia

Occupation: Teacher

Object: Microscope

Story: I was using a microscope to examine the heart rate of daphnia when the daphnia released its eggs and gave birth in front of 20 year 12 students. Needless to say they were very excited to reuse the daphnia for their population unit.

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Ted and his wife.

Name: Ted

Age: 56

From: Sevenoaks, Kent, UK

Object: Locusts

Story: To illustrate the reproductive system and cycle our science teacher showed us how locusts bred. There was a transparent case in which you could observe the various stages of the reproductive cycle from the locust laying the eggs right up to the emergence of the baby locusts. We dissected them as well to understand how the bodies of an insect was constructed into the 3 parts and also watched them mating before laying the eggs. It was no wonder that biology was my favourite science subject, as an unusual was of teaching it has left an impression on me that I have not forgotten.

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Émile and his microscope.

Name: Émile

Age: 6

From: Oxford, UK

Object: Microscope

Story: When I was at school doing P.E. I felt something crawling on my chin, I smacked it because I thought it was a spider, then I felt a shot of pain. It was a wasp! Then the sting was so painful I screamed. My teacher took me to the staff room, she got some ice that I put on the sting. My teacher pulled the sting out and we put it in a cup and I took it home. Then we put the sting under the microscope at home. It was black and it had red sticky stuff coming out of it. I think it might have been blood.

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Compound Microscope, c. 1853 (Inv. 53440). Despite being over 150 years old, this microscope from the Museum’s collection looks remarkably similar to the one from Robyn’s story – although that one wasn’t so shiny.

Name: Robyn

Age: 22

Occupation: Student

From: Surrey, UK

Object: Microscope

Story: For Christmas one year, when I was about 9, I was given a small microscope for children, and for the first couple of weeks I could not have been more excited. But, once I had looked at my hair, some onion and some (very dull) soil I was convinced I’d run out of things to do with it. This changed when my younger sisters came home from school with nits and I realised that I could place them under the microscope once they had been combed out. I can still remember the fascination and horror we all felt at seeing a living creature through the microscope lens.

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