Scientific Instruments on Display

Neuausgabe 2014
ISBN: 978-90-04-26439-7
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 4, 231 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Reihe: Scientific Instruments and Collections

During their active lives, scientific instruments generally inhabit the laboratory, observatory, classroom or the field. But instruments have also lived in a wider set of venues, as objects on display. As such, they acquire new levels of meaning; their cultural functions expand.
This book offers selected studies of instruments on display in museums, national fairs, universal exhibitions, patent offices, book frontispieces, theatrical stages, movie sets, and on-line collections. The authors argue that these displays, as they have changed with time, reflect changing social attitudes towards the objects themselves and toward science and its heritage. By bringing display to the center of analysis, the collection offers a new and ambitious framework for the study of scientific instruments and the material culture of science.

Zielgruppe

All interested in the history of science and scientific instruments, the material and visual cultures of science, and the institutional and social history of museums and museology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Ackermann, Silke

Kremer, Richard

Miniati, Mara

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunstpsychologie und -soziologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Museumskunde, Materielle Kultur, Erinnerungskultur
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunstsammlung, Museen, Ausstellungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Silke Ackermann, Richard L. Kremer and Mara Miniati

Colour Plates

1. Andrea Corsini and the Creation of the Museum of the History of Science in Florence (1930-1961)

Marco Beretta

2. “Not for their beauty”: Instruments and narratives at the Science Museum, London

Alyson Boyle

3. “More Artistic than Scientific”: Exhibiting Instruments as Decorative Arts in the Victoria & Albert Museum

Richard Dunn

4. “Of sufficient interest …, but not of such value …”: 260 Years of Displaying Scientific Instruments in the British Museum

Silke Ackermann

5. Instruments on Display at the Paris Observatory

Laurence Bobis and Suzanne Débarbat

6. Looking at Scientific Instruments on Display at the United States Centennial Exhibition of 1876

Richard L. Kremer

7. Permanent Demonstrations: The Science Teaching Museum at the University of Chicago

Steven C. Turner

8. The Display of Twentieth-Century Instruments at Humboldt State University

Richard A. Paselk

9. Slide Rules on Display in the United States, 1840-2010

Peggy Aldrich Kidwell and Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

10. “Exceedingly Ridiculous”: Telescopes on Displayon the Seventeenth-Century Stage

Ingrid Jendrzejewski

11. Instruments on Movie Sets: A Case Study

Ileana Chinnici, Donatella Randazzo and Fausto Casi

12. Display of Instruments on Seventeenth Century Astronomical Frontispieces

Inga Elmqvist Söderlund

General Index

Über Autor(innen)

Silke Ackermann is Director of the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford and President of the Scientific Instrument Commission of the IUHPS. She is particularly interested in the transfer of knowledge between the Islamic World and Europe.



Richard L. Kremer is Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He has published widely on the history of early modern astronomy and on the use, production of and trade in scientific instruments.



Mara Miniati is Emeritus Curator of the Museo Galileo in Florence. She is interested in Renaissance scientific instruments and in the history of the scientific institutions.