Events – Inside HSM Oxford

How a handbag brings us together

Andrea Ruddock — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 13:57:12 +0000

Oxford’s Christmas Light Festival is here — hooray! It’s wonderful to have an event that draws Oxford’s array of communities together, especially in these difficult times. And this year, Multaka volunteers are teaming up with the History of Science Museum (HSM) to create our first ever live-streamed, festival family event. The activities will take inspiration ... [Read more...]

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Fun and Games with Medieval Medicine

Robyn Haggard — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:26:15 +0000

What do you get if you mix quince, vinegar, water and honey? According to the medieval pharmacist al-Kuhin al-‘Attar, who worked in Cairo, Egypt, during the 13th century, an excellent cure for your flatulence!** This, along with mixtures containing ingredients such as asses’ milk to Dragon’s Blood, is just one of the many weird and ... [Read more...]

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Capturing the invisible

Scott Billings — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 10:36:11 +0000

This weekend sees the international launch of this year’s Big Draw, an initiative to encourage people of all ages to draw. It’s happening across Oxford on Saturday 19 September, and we are getting involved with a rather unusual take on drawing… For our X-Ray Line event we are interested not in the things that are easily seen ... [Read more...]

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A day in the life…

Scott Billings — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 09:42:07 +0000

We may be a small museum, but we get up to lots of different things… If you’ve ever wondered what happens here in a typical day, then take a look at this short film. Thanks to Tom Wilkinson and Tom Fuller in the University of Oxford Public Affairs Directorate for putting this together.

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For the Love of It

Scott Billings — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:44:17 +0000

28 April – 2 August 2015 By Robyn Haggard Do you have any particularly fond memories of science or scientific objects? It turns out that when we put our minds to it we can often recall many. For the last couple of months we have been collecting memories for our small exhibition, For the Love of It. ... [Read more...]

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The Mahler Project

Scott Billings — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 13:50:27 +0000

By Scott Billings Regular readers of Inside MHS Oxford may recall our article about the fulfillment of a 30-year ambition by Matt Westcott: to coordinate an orchestra of ZX Spectrums to perform an excerpt from Mahler’s 1st Symphony. This historic event came off the back of our Geek is Good special exhibition in 2014*, which featured ... [Read more...]

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Eclipseometers are go

Scott Billings — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 14:49:01 +0000

By Scott Billings The Moon came, the Moon went, and for a brief moment we were reminded that we inhabit a lump of rock floating in the middle of space. The word ‘eclipse’ derives from the Greek ekleipsis, which means an abandonment, or forsaking. When the Sun is obscured from view in the middle of the day, ... [Read more...]

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A Spectrum symphony

Scott Billings — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 13:48:36 +0000

It doesn’t often find its way into lists of the most influential books of the 20th century, but the ZX Spectrum BASIC programming manual has to be up there, for putting countless thousands of youngsters on the path towards a future career in computers. Matt Westcott revisits this great work with a particular ambition in ... [Read more...]

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Illuminating objects

Scott Billings — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 12:33:28 +0000

By Hannah Eastwood Last Friday evening saw many of Oxford’s cultural venues, including the University museums, hosting late-night events to celebrate the city’s annual Christmas Light Festival. One of the standout contributions to the evening was work completed by local primary school children along with the museums’ six HLF Skills for the Future trainees. The aim of ... [Read more...]

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The Robot Telescope

Scott Billings — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 14:26:13 +0000

In the late 1980s, amateur astronomer Jack Ells built an Automatic Photoelectric Telescope (APT) that, after a half-hour set-up, could operate unattended all night under the control of a BBC microcomputer. This ‘Robot Telescope’ was used to collect data about variable stars and was so well constructed that it could produce work of a professional standard. ... [Read more...]

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