Wearable optical toys: how Victorian devices influenced a contemporary jewellery maker

A guest post by Karen Smith, final year student at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee

Back in January I was doing research into Victorian Optical Devices for my degree show work at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. I had chosen to base my jewellery collection on Victorian optical devices and combine them with song lyrics to produce what I refer to as ‘Wearable Optical Toys’.

At the time I only knew a little about these intriguing devices and wanted to gain more insight into how they were made, what materials they are made from and how they worked. I contacted the National Museum of Scotland in the hope that they could help me out in some way.

I was lucky enough to get in contact with curator Tacye Phillipson. She gave me some background information on some of these devices, many of which I had no prior knowledge of. Tacye then arranged for me to visit the museum stores and view some of these items.

Curator Julie Orford was kind enough to show me around. Being able to examine these items up close and actually see how they are made was not only fascinating but also invaluable to my design work, allowing me to translate these optical devices into wearable objects.

Here are a few photographs from my visit to the museum stores.

Zoetrope

Peep show

Peep egg

After my visit I set about designing for my degree show collection. Here are some pictures of some of the items I came up with.

Zoetrope Ring Stands (2012). Based on the song ‘Butterfly on a Wheel’ by The Mission. Tops are spun to animate butterflies inside. Rings are removable and can be worn.

Phenakistoscope Spinning brooch (2012). Again based on the song ‘Butterfly on a Wheel’ by The Mission. Spin wheels in opposite directions to animate butterflies.

Peep Show Brooches (2012). Based on the song ‘Through Glass’ By Stone Sour.

Peep Show Brooches (2012). Peep Show has three separate brooches.

Without being able to visit the museum and actually get to see these optical devices I think I would not have been able to fully appreciate how these objects worked and I am very thankful to both Tacye and Julie for being so helpful. My visit also helped to affirm that a career in a Museum is something I would like to pursue.

If you are interested in seeing more of my work the Duncan of Jordanstone Art School Degree show opening night is 18 May from 6pm-9pm. And there after the Degree show is open until 27 May. Please come along and see some amazing creations. You can find out more at the Duncan of Jordanstone Degree Show website and also at my blog.

 

Reconstructing Lives: how does a prosthetic hand work?

By Tacye Phillipson, Senior Curator of Modern Science

One of the questions I have been frequently asked about the prosthetic hands in our Reconstructing Lives exhibition is: how are they controlled?  We use our hands for a wide variety of tasks requiring strength or dexterity and seldom think about how complicated they are and how many muscles and signals work together to make each gesture. For a prosthetic limb the user interface is vital; it needs to be simple and instinctive to operate. The wearer does not want to refer to the instruction manual, call the support desk, or even think about every motion he or she makes.

The hand with the most advanced technology in the exhibition is the i-limb ultra, the latest model from Touch Bionics in Livingston. These hands look amazingly lifelike when in their cosmetic covers, and each finger moves independently which gives them naturalistic poses. We display them without skins so some of the engineering which goes into them is visible.

Tying shoelaces using the i-limb ultra prosthetic hand. Photo © Touch Bionics.

The about 300 parts which went into the first model i-limb, pinned to a noticeboard at Touch Bionics’ workshop.

These hands are operated with battery power, electrical signals and an internal processor. The demonstration model that Touch Bionics sometimes kindly lend us for events comes with a torch, which acts as a replacement forearm to hold the batteries and support the hand. This torch has two pressure sensitive buttons added on the outside: one opens the hand, the other closes it. The hand can be instructed to move into more positions and modes by signalling to its internal software through holding down, or tapping on, the buttons.

Curator Julie Orford with the i-limb hand on its torch ‘forearm’. At the launch of the 26 Treasures project, visitors could try it for themselves.

Using buttons, and needing one hand to control the motion of the artificial hand, is a cumbersome way of using a prosthesis. Instead, amputees control these hands through sensitive electrical sensors placed on their skin. These detect the tiny electrical signals inside muscles as they contract. Because the muscles which close and open our fingers are in the arm, below the elbow, this can be very instinctive to learn. People with an amputation across the forearm can signal to their artificial hand using the muscles which controlled their fingers.

The back of a hand and arm showing the muscles and tendons which open the fingers. Gray’s Anatomy, 1858.

These prosthetic hands don’t enable their wearers play a piano sonata or touch type – not yet anyway – but they will point one finger to operate a keyboard ‘hunt and peck’ style. There is on-going worldwide research into controlling prostheses directly from brainwaves, which are detected either with sensors on the skin or surgically implanted electrodes. This technology is not yet ready for use outside a laboratory, but is one of many exciting developments which may revolutionise the field of prosthetics in the future.

An example of the first model i-limb from Touch Bionics is also on display in Scotland: A Changing Nation at the National Museum of Scotland, and was one of the objects featured in the 26 Treasures project. We also display the Edinburgh research leading up to this pioneering hand in the Shaping our World gallery.

 

Reconstructing Lives: installing the exhibition

By Julie Orford, Assistant Curator of Science

The beginning of March was busy for us in the Science section as we installed the Reconstructing Lives exhibition, which opened at the National War Museum on 9 March. Although the exhibition is a small one, there is still a lot of hard work that goes into creating it.

Over the past few months the objects were conserved and photographed, the label text was researched, written and revised and the images which bring the stories of the objects to life had to be sourced and printed. Our loans department have also been busy organising the borrowing of five legs and two hands for the display.

The week of exhibition installation is normally a flurry of activity so I thought I would share some of the photos I took over the course of the installation. I should also mention that the gallery technicians had already been beavering away for a week, preparing the gallery for installation and mounting the display panels but I wasn’t around to take photos of their input!

The Foyer case with the cosmetic hand coverings on display. My personal favourite in this case is the hand on the second left with the zip up the forearm. The realism of the silicone hands can be quite unsettling!

The first objects going into the case, with Chris Moon’s running blade in the foreground and the WWII aluminium arm in the background.

The strapping attached to the prosthetic legs provided a real challenge for the mount maker, Richard West. When you visit the exhibition do take a moment to admire the skill and craftsmanship that went into creating the mounts – they are a work of wonder!

Curator Tacye Phillipson and Russell Eggleton, the exhibition designer, suspend the strapping of the leg using stainless steel wires attached to the top of the case.

All installed! Tacye and Russell look on as Richard gives the limb mounts a final check over.

Thursday was perhaps our busiest day of the week. Poor Tacye’s day began at the ungodly hour of 06:40 with an interview on the BBC Radio Scotland breakfast programme. The final loan object pictured here in its travelling case arrived from the British Museum and we had the exhibition press view.

Tacye and Elena Jones from the British Museum carry out the condition check on the hand before it is locked into the case for the duration of the exhibition.

Here’s Tacye being interviewed by Pauline McLean for a feature on the BBC ‘Reporting Scotland’ news programme.

Conservator Darren Cox prepares to do a piece to camera on his contribution to the exhibition. Although this didn’t appear on the TV news bulletin, the audio recording featured on the BBC Radio Scotland ‘News Drive’ programme later that evening.

Seen on a photographer’s camera screen is a great shot of Tacye viewed through the exhibition case with a late-20th century prosthetic arm in the foreground.

The image of Tacye holding the i-limb ultra was the favoured photograph in the press coverage for the exhibition that appeared the next day. Here she is taking directions from a bank of photographers with the assistance of Kirsty Tough from the Marketing and Communications department.

Opening Day! Here we have some of the first visitors to the exhibition taking a closer look at the fantastic photographs which cover the walls of the gallery space.

The layout of the exhibition, designed by Jan Dawson uses a combination of text and image to illustrate the development of prosthetic limbs and to show the objects on display in use.

Part of the exhibition is an interview with Chris Moon, MBE. He was blown up by a landmine in 1995, losing his lower leg and right arm. This short film features his personal story and how he and others have adjusted to using prosthetic limbs.

The comments book – it’s great to read visitor responses to an exhibition. Here are the first two comments from a couple of Canadian visitors.

The finished exhibition.

So there we have a behind the scenes glimpse of the exhibition installation. Reconstructing Lives is open until February 2013 and entry to the National War Museum is free with admission to Edinburgh Castle. I look forward to reading your comments in the visitors’ book!

 

East Fortune Air Traffic Control?

By Ian Brown, Assistant Curator of Aviation
In August 2011 National Air Traffic Services (NATS) very generously donated an air traffic control console to National Museums Scotland. This was used to control the Hebrides Sector, covering a large expanse of the far north west of  Scotland, and came from the Scottish Area Control Centre (ScATCC), opeating from Atlantic House near Prestwick Airport. The console was introduced in 1978 and continued in use, with frequent equipment upgrades, until 2009 when ScATCC moved to the Prestwick Centre nearby.

National Museums Scotland already holds a number of items of air traffic control equipment. In particular, we have several control desks used in Oceanic Area Control in Atlantic House. These desks were in use between 1972 and 1978. They came to the National Museum of Flight back in 1991 and formed the centrepiece of a display about air traffic control, as shown here.

Prestwick Air Traffic Control Unit on display National Museum of Flight in 1991

The console acquired in August had to be stripped out for ease of transport and a team from NATS came to the National Museum of Flight for two days to put it all back together again. The photo below shows the equipment as it arrived at the museum.

Air Traffic Control unit arriving at National Museum of Flight.

After two days of fitting cables, screwing in components and connecting everything together, the console was completely transformed. With recording air traffic control radar displays fed to the screens and the backlit map displays all working, the equipment now looks exactly as the NATS team remembers it in use, barely two years ago. The images below show the guys working on the equipment, and then finished result.

Installing the Prestwick Air Traffic Control unit at National Museum of Flight.

Prestwick Air Traffic Control unit being installed at National Museum of Flight.

Air traffic control is an aspect of aviation that everyone knows about but very few ever get to see such equipment outside the movies. It is hoped to display our collection of air traffic control equipment in due course at the National Museum of Flight and give everyone a chance to experience this hidden side of aviation.

Completed installation of Prestwick Air Traffic Control unit at National Museum of Flight.

 

Admiral Cochrane: entrepreneurial engineer

By Desmond Thomas, Volunteer, National War Museum

The idea that a great naval hero such as Admiral Cochrane could simultaneously be the type of man who might work by flickering light on some far fetched idea in his garden shed was one that greatly intrigued me. So, when Stuart Allan approached me last year and requested that I research the creative element of Cochrane’s life, I instinctively accepted, having very little idea of what I would uncover in the process.

My main port of call for primary source material was the National Records of Scotland (formerly the National Archives of Scotland), whose collections feature the current exhibition Admiral Cochrane, The Real Master and Commander.

It was at times a difficult process trying to piece together the material relating to his various engineering projects and patents into one coherent chronological list. Although many books have been written about Cochrane, the majority have naturally tended to focus on his naval and political career, with only scant mention of his engineering endeavours.

Those familiar with Admiral Cochrane will be aware of his ‘secret war plans’ which advocated the use of chemical warfare against Britain’s enemies but the wide range of subject matter his projects touched upon proved surprising. Some of the things he worked on included street lighting, rotary steam engines, practical uses for bitumen, air compression in tunnel construction, pipe laying, smoke/gas extracting machines and screw propellers.

Plan for temporary mortars by Admiral Cochrane. Click on the image to see a larger version.

As a general picture of the type of work Cochrane had been getting involved with began to emerge, the next difficulty presented itself. Attempting to actually understand and interpret the often rather technical notes and diagrams that accompanied Cochrane’s many projects was not a straightforward  task for either myself or Stuart (both of us being military history types with questionable scientific knowledge!).

This is where National Museums Scotland colleagues such as Alex Hayward, Alastair Dodds and Klaus Staubermann from the Science & Technology department came into the picture and really helped us out. They allowed us to not only very quickly put Cochrane’s work into context but also to accurately categorize him not as an inventor but more as an entrepreneurial engineer who, in many ways, was not that unusual for his time. This perfectly illustrated to me the very real benefits of what a multi-disciplinary organization such as National Museums Scotland can bring to such a project.

Throughout my research my main concern was perpetually wondering whether we were getting the fullest overview of Lord Cochrane’s engineering curriculum vitae. Needless to say, when you are working with historical records you often have to work with what you can find at the time and simply get on with it. This certainly turned out to be the case, but despite this I feel we touched upon and discovered the vast majority of projects Cochrane had been involved in throughout his lifetime.

It is difficult to say with any degree of certainty what his greatest engineering achievement is. None of his ideas created the vast fortune he had hoped for during his lifetime (one feels he would have been persistently rejected on Dragons’ Den) but some of his ideas did see use in the years and decades following his death. His ideas on the use of air compression in the construction of tunnels, for example, can probably be viewed as one of his most successful, as it was influential in the building of the Hudson tunnel in the United States.

What proved most surprising to me in the course of researching Admiral Cochrane’s engineering interests was that most of the ideas he worked on had a civilian application rather than a military or naval one. The sheer breadth of the subject matter his projects covered was also impressive. I believe these elements will also surprise and interest visitors to the exhibition and at the same time illustrate what a unique and intriguing character Admiral Cochrane was. As this was the very first exhibition I have ever contributed to, I obviously learnt a lot in the process and am just fortunate that Stuart Allan was kind enough to give me the opportunity to assist and help out. Conducting research is by its nature a solitary activity but it was made all the easier in this case by the constant support and advice I received from Stuart from start to finish.

Admiral Cochrane, The Real Master and Commander runs at National Museum of Scotland until 19 February 2012.

 

The National Museums Scotland collection of navigational instruments

A guest post by Dr Willem Mörzer Bruyns. Dr Mörzer Bruyns is a historian of navigational science, specializing in the history of navigational instruments. He has been working with our Science and Technology department on cataloguing our nautical instrument collection.

The collection of the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh contains 149 cross-staffs, backstaffs, octants, sextants, quintants and artificial horizons; navigational instruments dating from between 1684 and the 1970s. In quality and quantity this section of the collection ranks at about the same level as the Science Museum in London.

Early instruments

The oldest navigating instrument in the Edinburgh collection is a Dutch cross-staff dated 1684. Cross-staffs were used at sea from the beginning of the sixteenth till the end of the eighteenth century, to measure the altitude of the sun or the Pole star above the horizon. With the altitude, and a nautical almanac, a seaman could calculate his latitude. Johan Sort of Amsterdam made this cross-staff; he was active as a manufacturer in the 1680s. As often is the case, the crosses have gone missing, and the staff was given a second life as a yardstick. It now has brass caps at either end stamped ‘C F Fife 1835’, a Fife verification mark introduced that same year.

The collection also contains two eighteenth-century backstaffs; instruments that like the cross-staff were used for altitude-measurement at sea. Benjamin Macy of London made one of them in 1726, for Captain William Cochren.

Backstaff made by Benjamin Macy of London for Captain William Cochren.

Octants

An octant is a double-reflecting instrument for measuring the altitude of a celestial body above the horizon; it was invented in London in 1731, and was a significant improvement over the cross-staff and backstaff. Edward Nairne in London made one of the early examples in the Museum’s collection, in 1774; another is by James Chapman, St Catherine’s in London. That is dated 1788, and was made for Captain John Race.

Octant made by Edward Nairne of London in 1774.

Most of the octants in the Museum date from the nineteenth and twentieth century. Dickie and Co in Troon sold an interesting example with a brass frame; it was made around 1900. Its scale is engraved in ivory and inlaid in an ebony rim that was then slid in the limb of the brass frame.

Sextants

Cary in London made two of the Museum’s sextants (an octant but with its arc extended from 90 to 120 degrees) in the 1890s; both have an early micrometer. With a micrometer a scientific instrument can be read more easily and quickly than by the traditional vernier. The micrometer was designed in the seventeenth century, and Jesse Ramsden of London was the first manufacturer to apply such a device to a sextant, in the 1780s. The problem with early micrometers was that there was no locked-in position between it and the arc. Carl Plath, sextant maker in Hamburg, Germany, solved this with his drum sextant, brought on the market around 1906.

Sextant made by Cary of London in 1896.

Instruments for hydrographic surveying

The Museum has a number of surveying instruments, for use by naval hydrographers. Alexander Adie in Edinburgh made two box sextants for surveying, both dating from around 1825. They have an unusual feature, a clamping screw and a tangent screw on their index arms that are uncommon on a box sextant.

Around 1892 Henry Hughes and Son in London developed a simple, easy to use surveying sextant that they called ‘Paget Angle Sextant’. It was held horizontally to measure the angle between two points on shore, in hydrographic surveying. The Museum also has two examples of what appears to be the ‘Paget’s’ predecessor: Hughes’s ‘Angle Sextant’.

Polar expeditions

Cary in London made the two quintants (a sextant with its arc extended to 150 degrees) with aluminium frames for the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty, to be taken on the British Antarctic Expedition of 1901-04, the Discovery Expedition. Both are now in the Museum’s collection. Aluminium was patented for making nautical and other scientific instruments in 1861, but most aluminium sextants and quintants are of later date. Aluminium weighs about one-fifth of brass which is a great advantage on expeditions, where every kilogram counts.

Quintant made by Cary for the British Antarctic Expedition of 1901-1904.

World War II

Later sextants in the collection include a number of bubble sextants that were made by Henry Hughes and Son in London during World War II, for use on aeroplanes of the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy. For security reasons they did not bear the manufacturer’s name, by simply the initials ‘A. M.’ for Air Ministry.

Later Sextants

In the 1960s East German sextants like the one made by Freiberger Präzisionsmechanik, in Freiberg, Saxony (then in the German Democratic Republic) became popular in the West. The Freiberg manufacturer was a subsidiary of the Zeiss instrument factory in Jena. East German sextants were light in weight (an advantage in use), reliable, easy to use, and cheap, and thus they contributed to the downfall of the British sextant industry.

The most recent acquisition in this section is a Periscopic aircraft bubble sextant, that was made by Kollsman Instrument Corporation in Elmhurst, NY, USA; it comes from a recently de-commissioned Nimrod aeroplane.

Dr Mörzer Bruyns examining an octant.

Provenance

Private individuals, such as former seamen or their descendants, donated a number of the navigational instruments to the Museum. A considerable number – especially for surveying – came from the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty. Many of the Scottish-made or retailed octants and sextants were acquired from Arthur Frank (1915-2005), a successful Glasgow businessman and collector of historic scientific instruments.

Finally, Leith Nautical College, on its closure in 1987, donated nineteen octants, sextants and artificial horizons. The College had been founded in 1855 and over the years old pupils and retired seamen gave their navigational instruments to the school, to be used as teaching tools in navigation classes.

 

Shining Lights and Bell Rock 200

By Dr Alison Morrison-Low, Principal Curator, Science

As we await the full reopening of the transformed National Museum of Scotland next summer, it is always good to be reminded of the outstanding collections held by National Museums Scotland. The material that has come to us over the years relating to lighthouse technology is of international significance, and no other collection in the United Kingdom has quite the same depth and breadth. Much of it had been on display in the former Civil Engineering gallery, which opened in April 1928. However, the contents of the gallery were packed up just before construction work began on the National Museum of Scotland in 1992.

It all started in 1859, when the Royal Society of Edinburgh decided to pass over to the newly opened Industrial Museum of Scotland a group of items associated with the building of the various lighthouses on the Eddystone Rock, off Plymouth. These items had come to the Society in 1828 from the widowed Susan, Countess of Morton. The material had been put together for, and consulted by, the great early civil engineer, John Smeaton, whose pioneering stone lighthouse on this dangerous reef remained standing until the 1870s, when the rock itself proved to be crumbling.

Engraving of John Smeaton's lighthouse at Eddystone.

This stone-built structure formed the inspiration for lighting one of Scotland’s most dangerous hazards for shipping: the Inchcape Reef off the east coast of Scotland, which threatened sailing vessels trading with the ports in the rivers Tay and Forth. Twice a day the reef is entirely submerged, but when the water is at its lowest it is uncovered to reveal a razor-sharp rock about 430 feet in length by 230 in breadth; for much of the time the danger lies just below the surface. There is an old legend that  a good Abbot of Aberbrothock (Arbroath) Abbey put a bell on the rock, which swung in the wind to warn mariners of the peril;  hence the name ‘the Bell Rock’.

The Northern Lighthouse Board was formed by Act of Parliament in 1786, with authority to make Scotland’s dangerous coasts safer for those who sailed around them. Their first Engineer was Thomas Smith, originally an Edinburgh lamp-maker, who took to his new trade of lighting Scotland’s coasts with great success. Smith brough this stepson Robert Stevenson into the business in 1796, and in due course he became Engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board; his memorial remains the Bell Rock lighthouse, first lit in February 1811.

Oil painting of the Bell Rock Lighthouse by A MacDonald of Arbroath. MacDonald painted this when out at the Bell Rock in 1820, painting the interior walls! The image helped form the basis for JWM Turner's famous watercolour.

But the collection here contains much more:  items constructed for the international trade exhibitons held during the latter part of the 19th century; the oldest lens-structure for a UK lighthouse; the prototype of the largest lens formation ever used; and, now, modern  additions for these days of automation, including an automatic bulb changer, hand-held GPS and a solar panel.

CG – 6P Lampchanger. Mechanisms such as this allowed lightbulbs in electrified lighthouses to be changed automatically.

You can see an array of items from our collection in the Shining Lights exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland. The exhibition is part of the Bell Rock 200 celebrations, which will continue well into 2011.

 

A flash of inspiration

By Julie Orford, Assistant Curator of Science

As many others that work in museums will agree, we have the kind of job that isn’t left behind when we leave the building at the end of the day. Since January, the majority of my days have been spent working on the Shining Lights exhibition and, as a result, I’ve found the wonderful world of lighthouses seeping into my free time as well.

It started when I ordered the lighthouse-based Doctor Who classic ‘Horror at Fang Rock’ from the Tom Baker era (who I consider to be one of the finest Doctors) which is well worth viewing if only to laugh at the pitiful special effects and wooden acting.

But there was a moment on a holiday I took over the summer when I think this infiltration of work life into my free time took on a new dimension, with the creation of a lighthouse inspired home-made parabolic reflector.

We have a number of genuine parabolic reflectors going into the exhibition, two of which are my favourite objects so before I show you my example, here’s where I found my inspiration!

The first is a reflector which has the appearance of an inverted glitter ball:

An early parabolic reflector.

This is an example of early lighthouse illumination. The small rectangles of silver backed mirror are set into the tin surround in a bed of plaster of Paris and the light is fuelled by whale oil – you can see the oil reservoir which rests on a small ledge at the back of the reflector.

The second reflector is a far more sophisticated example designed by Robert Stevenson and installed at the Bell Rock lighthouse in 1811. It displays a number of innovations in lighthouse illumination such as the frost lamp under the oil reservoir which keeps the oil at an ambient temperature throughout the winter months. But what I like most about this object is purely aesthetic: I love the contrast of the silvered reflective inner surface with the copper exterior and gleaming brass Argand lamp. I doubt the Lightkeepers whose job it was to keep the brass work shining thought of it in the same way, but it could be down to their constant cleaning that has kept this object looking ready for service 200 years later. (Although I mustn’t give the Lightkeepers of old all the credit: museum conservation staff have also worked very hard on the objects!)

Parabolic reflector designed by Robert Stevenson.

Stevenson's reflector from the side.

So now for my fine example:

My home-made reflector.

I think my version, which is constructed from a £20 barbecue and a hurricane lamp, does lack the elegance of Stevenson’s design but it demonstrates the principle of reflected light producing stronger illumination, especially when it’s compared with the inferior light emanating from the lamps hanging in the background. My lamp is fuelled by citronella oil rather than the whale oil and paraffin used in the past – we normally use paraffin but switched to citronella – a decision made to try to keep the midges at bay!

I didn’t go as far as trying to fashion a Fresnel lens or a Brewster burning glass to increase the beam but that’s a modification that may come about the next time I’m on holiday…

 

Caveat Curator: let the curator beware

By Tacye Phillipson, Senior Curator of Modern Science

In addition to my role as Senior Curator of Modern Science I am one of the museum’s Radiation Protection Supervisors. I also take an interest in some of the other hazards in the collection, and colleagues are often willing to share their discoveries with me.  It perhaps goes without saying that the museum collections contain many items which are no longer made or easily available.  Sometimes this is a great relief.  While some of the risks were known when the objects came into the collection, standards of labelling have varied over the centuries and the way potentially dangerous materials are cared for has changed.

Pharmacy jars for poisons: empty. The fluted surface is a safety precaution from around a century ago to reduce the risk of a pharmacist picking up the wrong bottle by accident.

Safely locked away in the museum stores are 24 mushroom shaped glass display jars containing chemical samples which were given to us in 1871 by the London metal refiners Johnson, Matthey and Co.  These are a rather fine example of materials in our care which are now considered hazardous in ways which were not such a consideration when they were acquired.  These jars all contain uranium compounds, but we had owned them for 25 years before Henri Becquerel discovered the phenomenon of radioactivity.  Thankfully, most of the samples are only mildly radioactive and the risk from this is easy to minimise.  However, we can’t relax: many of them are highly toxic.

Jars of uranium compounds predating the discovery of radiation.

One of my favourite examples of an invention I am really glad is no longer current is a fire extinguisher grenade design which would probably have been successful if used on a fairly small fire.  Unfortunately, carbon tetrachloride, the chemical used, is poisonous (may cause damage to liver, kidneys and brain, carcinogenic, risk of death…) and as if that weren’t enough it can form phosgene (better known as nerve gas) when it gets hot.  I am glad that these are no longer made.

Fire extinguishing grenades from the 20th century and duplicates which are now at http://www.lothian.fire-uk.org/museum/museum_intro.htm

I will be discussing these and further examples of the potentially dangerous things in the collection in a curator’s choice talk: Approach with caution. The talk takes place at 2pm on Friday 24 September in the Dunfermline Room, National Museum of Scotland. To book tickets, call 0131 225 7534. You can find out more on our website.

 

Time travel and technical toys: volunteering for the Science and Technology department

By Siri Clausen, Volunteer with the Science and Technology department

There are many reasons why people volunteer at museums. For some it is a way of passing down the knowledge that they have obtained throughout their life, others have a love of history that drives them to give time and effort to keep history alive. I have no such noble reason for giving my time – I was simply bored. Like the retired gentlemen that return week after week, I had a large amount of time on my hands this summer before I return to university for the final year of my university degree, so I decided that rather then sit at home and waste the summer months I would do something with my time.

Each department at the museum is different and the National Museums Scotland encompasses a number of different museums, so there is a place for all kinds of people who are willing to give of their time. I found my place in the Science and Technology department.

When you volunteer you have a specific job or area of work that you dedicate your time to. This is not to say that this is all you do, but it is what you return to time and again to try and complete. For me this task is cataloguing the collection of stereocards, which is part of the larger Howarth-Loomes collection. I am not the only person that is working on this or even the only volunteer, it is a huge and fascinating collection. Each and every set of pictures has a story and it is a chance to travel though time without ever leaving the comfort of the office.

A stereocard from the Howarth-Loomes Collection labelled 'Lunatic Asylum as seen from the Botanic Garden.' It is from Adelaide, South Australia

The National Museum is currently gearing up to open new exhibitions in the coming years and as always new collections are being received. Because of this there are a lot of different types of jobs that need to be done. In addition to cataloguing stereocards, I also worked on an upcoming exhibit for the Art and Industry gallery, which is due to reopen at the same time as the Royal Museum. This has a section which is about technology toys. If you think of the expression “boys and their toys” you will be able to understand some of the excitement that has been in the department. Nobody really grows out of their childhood completely and the sight of a favourite toy never fails to bring back the excitement and sense of adventure that we remember as children. If you go and see the new gallery, look out for the Lego, Meccano and Knex models, which are my contribution.

Some of the toys which are to go on display in the Art and Industry gallery.

How many people get to sit with some period Lego and build what they like, within certain dimensions? That was definitely a highlight of my summer, but there are many more. If looking at toys is not what you enjoy doing, or if you have children of your own that want to try their hand at building their own toys, there is a chance to build a telescope as part of the new schools program or create a working lighthouse. Both are my designs and I hope that it will be fun for the children to build them.

My final job before the summer drew to a close was to catalogue a collection which has been given to us by the NHS, more specifically the Southeast Mobility and Rehabilitation Technology (SMART) Centre. As for what’s actually in the collection, no doubt that will be revealed in a future blog.

Volunteering is well worth your time. If you are considering it then you should try it, it could lead to some amazing experiences and memories. The people that work for the museum have a large range of knowledge, and interests in many different things so there are possibilities for some very interesting discussions.

You can find out more about volunteering for National Museums Scotland here.