MHS News

Tony’s 400th birthday (b)log

 

Babbage_DecimalPoint crop

A decimal point used by Charles Babbage

Where our archivist Tony Simcock reminisces on the anniversary of his surprise appointment to the Museum, and celebrates the birth of logarithms along the way (its belated appearance here must be down to one of those annoying clerical errors…)

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I have to declare a lack-of-interest – I failed my maths O level …

I’d found myself at grammar school, doubtless due to some clerical error, I kid you not; I was such a numbskull I was mystified why gardening wasn’t on the curriculum (it was the main subject at primary school at Mow Cop!) – and then later, having failed the necessary O levels, and been rejected by Leicester University, I ended up, doubtless due to another clerical error, at Oxford, where maths O level is, or was then, a compulsory entrance requirement.

“I came back to Oxford for a day-trip” Photo: Bob Lawton)

“I came back to Oxford for a day-trip”
Photo: Bob Lawton

And then that summer’s day in 1980 when I came back to Oxford for a day-trip, the interview was just an excuse really, it never crossed my mind I’d get the job – I don’t suppose I told them about failing the maths O level but I did bring along some poetry magazines in which my poems had been published (I failed English literature O level as well), and handed them round to the interviewers to underline my un-suitability …

cunning plan? not – they wanted me so badly that even though I didn’t have a phone they searched telephone directories (as they were called in those days) for anyone with the same surname at Mow Cop and as a result my father came to my house the very next morning and said he’d been woken up by a phone call from someone who talked posh asking if he was any relation to Tony Simcock, if so could he get a message to me to Phone Oxford Urgently – I suppose Superman feels like that, when the call comes, and like Superman I dashed to the nearest phone box (as they were called in those days) …

so anyway, I was saying about my lack-of-interest in maths – it was a mixed compliment, they’d ended up (the job interviewers that is) having to choose between an astrophysicist and a poet (their own words) – job interviewers are always looking for someone dynamic and motivated and similar job-advert jargon, plus some knowledge of the subject would be an advantage (actually it said ability to type would be an advantage, to give you an idea how the world’s changed in just 34 years, now even my cat can do it) – but they weren’t, the interviewers weren’t remotely looking for someone motivated and with a maths O level, the astrophysicist scared the asteroids out of them he was so dynamic, they were looking for a docile simpleton so utterly lacking in interest and motivation that he (or she – as you say now) would stay in the job for decades…

"What I really wanted to be was a comedian"

“What I really wanted to be was a comedian”

either that or it was another of these clerical errors; so anyway – today (August 18th, 2014 [yet another clerical error on our part – ed.]) is the 34th anniversary of my appointment to the staff of the Museum – I don’t need a maths O level to work out the beautiful cosmic significance of the number 34 – and it’s a Monday as well – so that’s how I came from being a little boy so brainless he was allowed to skip lessons and do gardening, via being a temporary poet (I gave up poems once I’d got the job, of course, like you do), to helping Jennifer, our librarian, put on a small display of books and slide rules to commemorate the 400th birthday of Napier’s invention of logarithms – just between you and me what I really wanted to be was a comedian, but I settled for wanting to be a museum curator as the next best thing …

I realise I’ve rambled a little – but what I was going to say actually was that I always felt like the chap in Jake Thackray’s song: “I used to think that logarithms were things that scuttled about in attics, and thirds were little flowers with square roots”; and then there’s Napier’s even zanier invention, the decimal point, can’t you just picture it? – a birthday display of decimal points – and all the puns you could get in? (what would you say is the Point of this exhibition? can you Point out a couple of the highlights? well, Kirsty, here’s a decimal point that was used by Babbage …) I know I’m supposed to be lauding logarithms blaa blaa, but – a world without decimal points – we’d all be using sixteenths and you wouldn’t know whether you’d written a cheque for 4 guineas or 400 – and anyway, if there wasn’t a decimal point how would they know if I’d passed or failed?

Tony Simcock – Museum archivist

Editor’s note: We asked our archivist to write us a blog on how he and librarian Jennifer Dumbleton came to put together the current small display of books and slide rules that marks the 400th anniversary of the invention of logarithms, and this is what we got!

A report from the ‘red carpet’

Objects of Invention

Our Objects of Invention public engagement initiative with the Department of Engineering Sciences, which reached the national finals in this year’s Engage Competition, was made possible thanks to the efforts of 18 engineers and the training in public engagement provided by the Oxford University Museums and Collections Joint Museums Education Service. One of those engineers was DPhil student Justine Schluntz, who attended the awards ceremony at the Natural History Museum in London. Here are Justine’s thoughts about the Objects of Invention project itself and the awards ceremony for the finalists.

DPhil engineer Justine Schluntz (right) with Christopher Parkin of MHS and Caroline Cheeseman of the Joint Museums Education Service at the Engage awards ceremony

“The Objects of Invention project provided public engagement training for engineering students at the University of Oxford (myself included) and culminated in a public event at the Museum of the History of Science which attracted over 2,000 visitors in a single day. We also carried out three schools events at the Museum.

The ceremony in London kicked off with a wonderful talk by Professor Alice Roberts about the importance of public engagement, especially for science researchers. Next, Sophie Duncan, the deputy director of National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE), introduced the finalists for each of the awards. For each award category the audience was treated to a set of excellent short videos summarising the shortlisted projects prior to the announcement of the category winner.

The winner of the STEM category was a project called “The Enlightenment Café: Deadinburgh”.  The Deadinburgh audience worked with scientists and actors to learn about epidemiology and solve a mock zombie epidemic in Edinburgh.

We had the opportunity to meet some of the amazing people who had worked on other shortlisted projects at a reception following the awards ceremony. The atmosphere was brilliantly upbeat, and we left with a wealth of ideas, which we will look to implement in future public engagement projects.”

Thanks to Justine for her write-up of the event and for getting involved in the project in the first place. Although we didn’t win, to be shortlisted from over 240 entrants nationally is a great testament to everyone’s hard work and skill.

Road trip to the British Museum

MHS_OITF_14Earlier this week a rare event occurred: all the staff at the MHS (well, lots of us anyway) headed away from the Museum for a day out together. It was part pleasure, part professional – visiting the British Museum in London for some behind-the-scenes snooping around, and the chance to share a few insights with the staff there.

The Sutton Hoo helmet

The trip was arranged especially by our new director, Dr Silke Ackermann, who worked at the British Museum in a range of leadership roles for 16 years, after joining in 1995. Handily, this permitted special access and we got to see inside the BM’s new World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre, a project that has been ten years in the planning and construction. It is an impressive space, as yet unfilled with objects but primed to receive them with shelves and doorways large enough for lifting trucks to deliver even the biggest of treasures.

A curator-led talk of the redesigned Sutton Hoo displays revealed some of the nerdy display tricks that museum people are always on the look-out for; in this instance it was the use of non-reflective glass for the showcases. We also got an introduction to the current Vikings: Life and Legend exhibition, which really helped to bring its material to life.

Tea point: the most important room in the building

But it’s not always the high-impact displays themselves that catch your attention. For our volunteer tour guide Ken Taylor, the highlight was the tour of the old Victorian passageways and tunnels – made even smaller by the cable and ventilation trunking of the new facility.

“It was like walking through a scale model of the London Underground and then into the new building – what a contrast! Huge, light and airy rooms, the enormous doors you could drive a lorry through, and a lift that could transport articulated trucks down to the basement,” he says.

Getting out and about like this to talk to colleagues in other museums and pick up tips, tricks and inspiration from the way other people work can obviously be very valuable. Thanks very much to the BM for hosting us. We hope that this away day will be the first of more regular jollies to come.