Curious Devices and Mighty Machines: Exploring Science Museums

270 Pages·2022·11.274 MB·English

by  Samuel J. M. M. Alberti

C U R I O U S D E V I C E S
AND
M I G H T Y M A C H I N E S

C U R I O U S
D E V I C E S
AND
M I G H T Y
M A C H I N E S
EXPLORING SCIENCE
MUSEUMS
SAMUEL J.M.M. ALBERTI
REAKTION BOOKS
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32, Waterside
44–48 Wharf Road
London N1 7UX, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2022
Copyright © Samuel J.M.M. Alberti 2022
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publishers
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN978 1 78914 639 4
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7
1 HOW COLLECTIONS CAME TO BE 37
2 COLLECTING SCIENCE 75
3 TREASURES OF THE STOREROOM 111
4 ENGAGING OBJECTS 153
5 CAMPAIGNING WITH COLLECTIONS 199
6 LIVELY COLLECTIONS 225
REFERENCES 233
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 255
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 257
PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 259
INDEX 261
1 Not ‘a copper robot from the golden age of sci-fi’ but a radio frequency accelerating cavity
from CERN’s Large Electron–Positron Collider, operational from 1989 to 1995, donated by CERN
to the science collection of National Museums Scotland.
INTRODUCTION
Consider the 2-metre, 2-tonne metal machine now
housed in the National Museum of Scotland (illus. 1).
In 2014 a journalist compared such a device to ‘the
bust of a copper robot from the golden age of sci-fi, with a bul-
bous round head, ribbed skin, red cyclopean eye and silver claws
which project, raptor-style, from what would be its breast’.1 And
yet it is not science fiction but science fact. This apparently crude
apparatus is actually just one part of a highly precise scientific
instrument, and if we were to look inside, we would see some of
the most highly machined copper in the world (illus. 2). It was one
of 128 accelerating cavities that were once positioned around the
vast loop of the Large Electron–Positron Collider at the largest
laboratory in the world, the European Organization for Nuclear
Research known as CERN in Geneva. Their job was to whip sub-
atomic particles around the 27-kilometre (17 mi.) loop so that they
smashed together, annihilating each other and forming new par-
ticles from their energy. The cavities served their time between
1989 and 1995, and their successors were replaced by the Large
Hadron Collider, which CERN scientists famously used to discern
the presence of the Higgs boson, the so-called ‘God particle’.
CERN distributed elements of the retired Electron–Positron
Collider around the world: not only to laboratories and universities,
but to museums. This one is in Edinburgh, on display on the third
floor of the museum in which I work. This may seem a curious
7
2 The view inside the Large
Electron–Positron Collider
cavity: precisely machined
copper.