Abstracts, Past Meetings
XVII, Edinburgh: National styles and identity: scientific, technical and medical artefacts in a global context.
Alec Badenoch et al:
(http://www.makingeurope.eu/www/en/virtual-exhibit)
Transnationalizing artefacts? Lessons from Inventing Europe
Digital artefacts are increasingly entering into transnational circulation via the internet. Portals such as Europeana allow users to search a range of regional and national collections at the same time, and potentially create new links and connections between them. Particularly the new potential of Web 2.0 environment creates new opportunities to multiply the frames and stories around an artefact and question the way ‘nationality’ has been inscribed on it through its production, use, and ordering within a collection.
But do these new environments diminish or strengthen such ‘national’ frames? This presentation presents first results from Inventing Europe (www.inventingeurope.eu), a collaborative online exhibit built using the collections of a number of national and regional cultural heritage collections. Explicitly aimed at demonstrating the transnational stories of technology, it provides a key opportunity to explore the way the ‘national’ voices of technological artefacts are being transformed - or reinforced - by their use and re-use in a transnational environment.
Jessica Bradford (Science Museum, London):
The Rugby Tuning Coil: Recapturing an Object’s ‘Roots’
The Rugby Tuning Coil will form the centrepiece of a new permanent gallery at London’s Science Museum. Emblematic of the pioneering days of worldwide communication, the ‘monstrous’ coil rises to a height of six metres. Messages sent through the coil had global reach; enabling Britain to administer her dominions, communicate with her merchant fleet and send encrypted messages to nuclear submarines. Rugby radio virtually extended Britain’s national borders – as one newspaper reported: ‘The farthest parts of the Empire could now be made to feel that they were within five miles of Fleet Street.’ The radio station and its gargantuan equipment were elevated from their immediate context. Submariners never saw, nor ‘spoke to’ Rugby, yet ‘just hearing her voice [her callsign GBR, Great Britain Rules… was a comforting feeling.’ The tuning coil has been physically uprooted for display in the Science Museum. Will this simply reinforce the object’s role in promoting a nationalistic agenda? Or can interpretative techniques, including oral histories, recapture its personal story? Uncovering the experiences of users and operators, grounds the object in a local community, distinct from its position on the world stage.
Robert Bud (Science Museum, London):
Making science as British as roast beef: Using stories and artefacts in the Victorian Britain
The paper looks at the way that “applied science” which was often associated with foreign models of technical education was shown nonetheless to be truly British by the citation and display of epic stories. Models would be James Watt and Robert Stephenson. Watt and Stephenson were both cited in lectures and of course displayed in both the 1876 loan exhibition and in the subsequent science museum by Norman Lockyer very conscious of the need to promote a culture of science. I will also argue that there is a need today to remind modern visitors of epic stories of the past so that they can appreciate the meaning of past models which were often left largely implicit because they were assumed to be known.
Dorothy Cochrane (Smithsonian,
National Air and Space Museum):
Re-engaging the public with artifacts: Presenting the survey flights of Charles and Anne Lindbergh
The Lindbergh name holds a special place in history as Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean profoundly changed the world. Less heralded but nearly as stunning is a pair of flights that Charles made with his wife Anne to survey prospective international air routes, routes that are still in use today. The explorations on the edges of the northern hemisphere had a rich artifact legacy in equipment and supplies, a legacy that was stored away for decades. For thirty-five years, the Lindberghs’ Lockheed Sirius sat as an unknown in the Pioneers of Flight gallery of the National Air and Space Museum with only hint that its two flights of more than 40,000 miles were accomplished with unprecedented international cooperation and allowed Pan American Airways to create an international airline. Anne’s extraordinary contributions as copilot and radio operator were only briefly mentioned. When the opportunity to renovate arrived, the overriding question became: how to make this unit (and the entire gallery) instructive, relevant and inviting to the public?
Charlotte Connelly (Science Museum, London):
Collecting and representing Cameroonian communications stories
In autumn 2014 the Science Museum’s new gallery Making Modern Communications will open to the public, featuring a range of historical and contemporary stories from around the world. This paper will consider the challenges the Museum has faced in exploring the ways that communications technologies are radically changing the landscape in Cameroon, West Africa. To tackle this in March 2012 members of the gallery team carried out a field trip to Cameroon in West Africa to acquire both objects for the collection to make films that capture the way these new technologies are affecting peoples’ lives and attitudes. The work has been carried out in association with an anthropologist who has been working in the region for many years and in consultation with members of the Cameroonian community currently living in London. This paper will look in particular at the interplay between collected artefacts, filmed interviews and the input of local community when developing museum exhibits about distant cultures.
Elsa Davidson (National Museums Scotland):
Atomic artefacts: National perspectives on nuclear heritage
The Dounreay Nuclear Power Development Establishment was the British centre of fast reactor research and development from its foundation in 1955 until the cessation of the final reactor in 1994. The 150-acre site now represents the largest nuclear decommissioning project in Scotland to-date. National Museums Scotland (NMS) face significant challenges in the effective collection and representation of nuclear heritage but the decommissioning of Dounreay has led NMS to play an important role in the development of a heritage strategy designed to secure the cultural legacy of Scotland’s nuclear energy industry.
Focusing on the nuclear energy collection of NMS, this paper will examine key artefacts in relation to scientific and technological innovation in Scotland and national attitudes to nuclear power. It will also explore the role of nuclear artefacts in informing public debate and future energy policy in Scotland.
Dirk van Delft (Museum Boerhaave):
Museum Boerhaave: National artefacts telling international stories?
In 2009 Museum Boerhaave purchased a portable globe electrical machine for the amount of £ 14,000. It was made by the London instrument maker Edward Nairne, ca. 1770. This type of electrical machine was widely used by 18th century learned societies. Because of the extreme vulnerability of the glass globe, not even a single item of such an instrument existed anymore in the Netherlands. Such a purchase is a rare thing for Museum Boerhaave, the Dutch national museum for the history of science and medicine. The vast majority of the artefacts belonging to the museum collection has its origins in Dutch institutions, ranging from universities via learned societies to research laboratories of multinationals like Shell, Philips and Unilever. Science, however, has for centuries been truly international in character. Is this a problem? Is it possible to tell relevant stories of science by means of showing national artefacts? Are we confronted with major shortcomings in the collection to be overcome? In fact, what are the relations between the displayed artefacts and the messages a national museum for the history of science should communicate?
Heloise Finch-Boyer (National Maritime Museum, Scotland):
The Omega antenna: US achievement in the Cold War or a national symbol of French decolonization?
This paper studies artefacts as signifiers of nationhood by looking at how one artefact - a 450m high antenna for the Omega navigation system - was enlisted as a national achievement by both the US, France and the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. The Omega navigation system was used in the 1970s and 1980s as a precursor to GPS. This paper examines competing national claims over the Omega antenna in La Reunion in order to explain the problematic coupling of "artefact" and "nation", and the challenges for interpreting the Omega radio receiver in the National Maritime Museum's collection. I argue that the idea of "national styles" and identity is deeply problematic and silences competing national ideologies of use and ownership outside centres of innovation in the Global North.
Benjamin Gross (Chemical Heritage Foundation):
Broadcasting the history of electronics: Finding local and global audiences for TCNJ's Sarnoff Collection
In December 2009, the David Sarnoff Library closed its doors. After more than forty years, the 6,000-plus artifacts in its collections were transported from the former Princeton labs of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), a public university located outside of Trenton. Theoretically, keeping these objects nearby, rather than donating them to a larger, more established museum would encourage greater public awareness of the region's technological legacy. Until recently, however, these objects, including the first commercially available electron microscope and the first color television picture tube, remained in storage. In this paper, I will describe preliminary efforts to design exhibits incorporating the Sarnoff Collection's holdings into TCNJ's intellectual life as well as future efforts aimed at broadening access to national and international audiences.
Bettina Gundler (Deutsches Museum):
National car legends: Automobile, industry, and national identity reflected in the car collection of the Deutsches Museum
Germans often call themselves an “Auto Nation”. This term refers to the automobile as one of the most beloved consumers’ items as well as to the basic role of automobile industry in German economy. It also often refers to the strong conviction of many Germans, that the car in its origins is a German invention. Cars like the Benz Patent-Motor-Car, Daimler's and Maybach's first “quadricycle” or later on, the first Mercedes or the racing types built by Auto Union became national myths of German automobile history soon after their appearance. Some of these cars of national importance find their way into the collection of the Deutsches Museum. This paper will discuss to which extend the perception of special cars of the museum’s collection, like Carl Benz’ first car (1886) and the Auto Union Grand Prix Car of the 1930s, as well as the presentation of motor vehicles in the Museum itself contributed to a German self-image as a “nation of great automobile manufacturers” and automobile industry.
Johannes-Geert Hagmann & Wilhelm Fuessl (Deutsches Museum):
Not for the living - the troubled history of Philipp Lenard’s scientific artefacts at the Deutsches Museum
In 2011 a paper box without proper labelling re-appeared during the preparation of the move of 40000 objects from the collections of the Deutsches Museum at the main building in downtown Munich to new storage facilities. Containing several series of photographs from scientific experiments, the artefacts are originally part of the scientific estate of Philipp Lenard (1862-1947). Lenard was the winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1905 and the leading protagonist of the nationalist and anti-Semitic “Deutsche Physik” movement. Despite several requests, Lenard, through a feeling that the Deutsches Museum and its exhibition followed wrong attitudes, had refused to donate any instruments to the Museum during his lifetime. The Museum owns the collection of more than 200 artefacts and a small collection of his documents since 1956, but only recently conducted systematic research on the history of their provenience and scientific context by using documentation, including Lenard’s laboratory notes, from the Museum archives.
This paper will introduce the troubled history of Lenard’s scientific instruments at the Deutsches Museum, elaborating on Lenard’s antipathy with an institution of inter-national significance and discussing the role of the Museum in dealing with the biography of a nationalistic scientist. As advocate of a “Germanic” style in physics which he contrasted with the mainstream of international physics, Lenard exemplifies multiple efforts in Weimar and National Socialist Germany to establish a national cognitive frame of science.
Boris Jardine (Science Museum, London):
'one vast headless society': Charles Piazzi Smyth and the material culture of anti-internationalism
The work of Scottish Astronomer Royal Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900) is intimately connected with questions of both nationalism and the importance of artefacts. One the one hand, he spent much of his career searching for the ideal atmospheric conditions for the deployment of astronomical instruments; on the other, he argued strenuously against international co-operation in scientific endeavour. Uniting the two strands in Piazzi Smyth’s work is his extraordinary search for a divinely sanctioned Imperial inch, which took him to Egypt and the meticulous measurement of the Great Pyramid at Giza. I propose to present the results of my research into the material culture of Piazzi Smyth’s work, in particular his ‘pyramidology’, which resulted in the remarkable collection of standards and measuring instruments now held at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Albert Kümmel-Schnur (Universität Konstanz ):
Alexander Bain – a Scottish inventor?
In contemporary media histories, Alexander Bain is mainly known for an invention patented in 1843 that is said to be the forerunner of fax technology in particular and technical image transmission in general. In histories of electrical horology, he is credited for being the 'father of the electric clock'. Both inventions are claimed of international importance. Biographical accounts, however, tend to stress the fact that Alexander Bain was a Scotsman, „Hero of the North“ or „Watten man“ as local publications label him. Not a single mention of Bain fails to acknowledge that he was of Scottish origin.
In my contribution to the Artefacts conference I will look at the choice of artefacts that are used to present Bain as a particular Scottish inventor. Are there inventions that are claimed to be Scottish just because they were Alexander Bain's brainchildren? Which character traits of Bain are regarded to be Scottish? And how does the inventor's alleged Scottishness provide a framework to interpret the functionality or even the dysfunctionality of the clocks and telegraphs invented by him?
Jennifer Landry (Chemical Heritage Foundation):
Willard Libby and the Libby Shield
In 1945 Willard Libby developed a method to use Carbon-14 testing to radiocarbon date organic materials, this work eventually led to him being awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The device that he used in his work became known as the Libby Shield - an artefact that would travel with him from Chicago to New York City as he took on a new role as head of the Atomic Energy Commission. Libby would become a polarizing figure in his AEC role during the 1950s and would eventually resign and become a chemistry professor at UCLA. The Libby Shield, however, would remain in NYC and eventually be stored on a loading dock at the Department of Homeland Security, forgotten by all but a few physicists who were two degrees removed from Libby's tenure in the building until it was "rescued" from the scrap yard by CHF in early 2012. This paper will explore what the Libby Shield can tell us about Willard Libby, his ground breaking work in radiocarbon dating and how his positions during the early years of national and international policy on atomic testing impacted his legacy and the fate of this significant artefact.
Jennifer K. Levasseur (Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum):
Camera as national icon
The names NASA and Hasselblad became forever linked when in 1963, Walter Schirra carried a modified Hasselblad camera into space on his Mercury Sigma 7 orbital flight. The Swedish brand gained global fame in its association with NASA, despite having already made a significant impact on the professional photography scene after the first production camera came on the market in the early 1950s. This presentation will explore the evolution of the Hasselblad camera: from professional use to astronaut use, from local product to national/global icon, and from operational equipment to museum artifact. How has the success of Hasselblad, most evident in the space program, reflected or changed Swedish style and culture? How can the NASA-Hasselblad relationship change the typically U.S.-centric interpretation of NASA’s success? How can a museum use other non-U.S. manufactured products (mostly small equipment) to bring an international dimension to the human spaceflight story? Asking these questions along with reviewing current display and collection information may highlight new ways to turn a normally nationalistic story into a truly global one.
F. Robert van der Linden (Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum)
National characteristics in aircraft construction: The World War II collection in the National Air and Space Museum
The collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum contains more than 360 aircraft encapsulating the entire span of the history of flight. While primarily U.S-centric in orientation, the collection houses aviation artefacts from around the globe, particular those built by the major combatants during the Second World War. The design and construction of these aircraft reflect the political, economic, social, as well as technological forces within each the aviation industry of each country. While foregoing stereotypes, these influences are revealed, in part, through the techniques used in producing these war machines. Some nations stress simplicity in design and manufacture for reliability, maintenance, and conservation of resources, while others stress the use of complex, precise technologies to achieve the winning edge in combat. Others combine these influences based on their economic and cultural traditions. Quality versus quantity; craft traditions versus mechanization and mass production are central to this argument. Geopolitical forces such as population natural resources drove the appearance of these aircraft and highlighted the characteristics that would eventually form the national character of these machines. In my paper, I will examine, U.S., British, German, Italian, Soviet, and Japanese aircraft design and construction as revealed through the museum’s extensive restoration and preservation programs.
Ad Maas & Tiemen Cocquyt (Museum Boerhaave):
The truth in a layer of clay: A replication of ‘s Gravesande’s vis viva experiment
In 1722 the Leiden professor Willem Jacob ‘s Gravesande dropped brass spheres of different weights, from different heights in a layer of clay and measured the depths of the impressions. He concluded that the ‘force’ contained by the accelerating spheres was proportional to the square of their velocities. This apparently simple experiment had large implications. ‘s Gravesande’s result contradicted the view of his own master Isaac Newton, who contended that the ‘force’ (we would now say kinetic energy) was proportional to the velocity. For Newton and his followers far-reaching metaphysical and religious consequences were at stake and ‘s Gravesande was considered as a betrayer and was even accused of being a ‘spinozist’. In our presentation we will demonstrate a replication of ‘s Gravesande’s experiment. Could he really have observed what he claimed to have seen? Did he himself perhaps have other motives than purely scientific ones?
Birgit Nemec (Universität Wien):
Social landscapes and political images. Visual cultures in Vienna, global networks and medico-anatomical artefacts as media of exchange
Anatomists, sociopoliticians and artists produced in early 20th century Vienna a variety of images of the human body, that not only gained international prominence but had different functions, uses and meanings in scientific, political and cultural contexts. Along five key artefacts, an anatomical atlas, a wire brain model, a public health chart, an x-ray film and an oil painting I will trace exchange processes between national and global visual cultures. These artefacts reveal vivid stories about drawing social landscapes (Latour 2007), producing political images (Rancière 2007) and propagating knowledge about the body. Uses and later careers in collections, museums and reprints seem to intertwine with actor’s notions of subjectivity, society, nationhood and internationalism. Thus, a closer look at urban structures and local milieus, their international networks and technological practices elucidates how the first social- democratic anatomical atlas links to hygiene fairs, the global polis and the new visuality of radiokinematography.
Panagiotis Poulopoulos (Deutsches Museum):
The multiple ‘sounds’ of a silent artefact: The guittar of Robert Burns
A small pear-shaped guitar dated 1757, displayed in the Burns Birthplace Museum, is thought to have belonged to Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet and avid collector of traditional songs.
The guittar was one of the most popular instruments in Georgian Britain, particularly among amateur performers of the polite society. Interestingly, although the instrument had been initially promoted by professionals of various origins, by the end of the eighteenth century its manufacture and distribution had been dominated by English entrepreneurs and the instrument had adopted its present name ‘English guittar’.
This paper will present the controversies behind the development of the guittar, discussing how the instrument started as an imported ‘fashion’ before adapting to the needs of new audiences. Moreover, using the Burns guittar as a case study, the paper will examine how non-functioning musical instruments can be effectively used as educational or research tools.
Carolyn Russo (Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum):Photographing a national collection: Artifact stories through the lens
As a staff photographer and museum specialist for the National Air and Space Museum I have the unique opportunity to create books and exhibitions based on NASM’s collection and on flight-related subjects in the U.S. and internationally. In this position, my work has conveyed the US national story in aviation and spaceflight, but also has captured the international dimensions of these activities. For my talk, I will discuss my methodology of historical story telling through the power of photography as presented in a series of book projects I have executed during the last decade. Artifacts of Flight (Harry N. Abrams, 2003) focused on artifacts that humanize an event or evoke emotion such as the hand-held stop watch used by the Wright Brother’s to time the first flights in 1903, or pair of scissors used to cut Amelia Earhart’s hair before her last flight, or a pair of Moon boots (covered in moon dust) worn on the final trip to the Moon. In Plane View: Abstractions of Flight (powerHouse Books 2007, and wide spread national traveling exhibition), showcased the aesthetic qualities of artifacts and depicts iconic aircraft as art. The Art of the Airport Tower (forthcoming powerHouse Books 2014) explores the styles and designs of contemporary and historical airport control towers in the US and abroad and interprets airport towers as symbols of technological change, architectural art forms, and cultural expressions. Photographs from each project will offer comparative views and explore the approaches used for a visual national and international narrative of aviation and space flight.
Thomas Schuetz (Universität Stuttgart):
The “long case clock” and the town museum of Stuttgart
The cultivation and construction of the tradition of the car and supplying industries in the Stuttgart Metropolitan Area had a long history. A tradition that fundamentally shaped the self-reception of the local population as technological advanced Area while it is an established view among historians that this history had been massively shaped by economic interests and is used as a means of promotion for the overwhelmingly powerful Automobile industry. It is planned to establish a town museum for the City of Stuttgart in the near future. It is quite obvious that in such an exhibition the history of the Automobile must be told. In this context artefacts like one of the first Piston engines from Daimler or the 100 000th magnet from Bosch will be shown.
The self-perception of Germany as the mother country of modern individual mobility evokes quite different reactions among different social groups, while the historical relevance of the subject remained unquestioned. While for some the glorification of the founding fathers of the Automobile still remains valid, others would prefer to focus on questions like, how mass motorization shaped the cities of our time. But these artefacts also bear the tradition of their development, with Germany as a latecomer in the Industrialization and as a follower and imitator of the French, English and American traditions of engineering.
Joan Smith (Edinburgh University):
‘Smugglerius’: art and anatomy
In this talk Joan Smith, lecturer in drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art (eca) will discuss the écorché cast known as ‘Smugglerius’, which is part of the eca plaster cast collection. The eca cast is one of only two known 19th century copies of the 18th century original, which was created under the direction of the anatomist, William Hunter, from the body of a hanged criminal.
The cast was created for the teaching of anatomy to art students at the Royal Academy in London. As an educational tool it symbolised the Enlightenment’s thirst for knowledge but its darker side embodied 18th century society’s attitude to punishment and death. Based on the Roman figure of the Dying Gaul, the cast encompassed both anatomical analysis and classical form and emphasised the importance of understanding the workings of the human body when creating beautiful figurative art.
The story of this artefact will engage audiences in understanding the links between anatomy and aesthetics within the European Academies, a tradition which continues today.
Alex M Spencer (Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum):
Designed for flying: National approaches to personal flight equipment
Military uniforms are perhaps the most overt article of national identity. A nation’s soldiers are often recognized by the color of the coat they wear. The British red coat, Prussian and French blue, and Russian green are just a few examples. These colors had a practical purpose separating friend from foe and aiding in the command and control of massed formations of men.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, air forces joined the armies and navies as a third branch of a nation’s military. Identification of pilots and aircrew was not as important but new technologies and designs emerged to protect them from the harsh conditions of combat at high altitude.
The diverse international characteristic of the National Air and Space Museum’s flight material collection helps to illustrate the different approaches that nations took toward equipping their pilots and aircrews. New scholarship is helping to reveal these interesting trends of technology, fashion, and economic conditions through the examination of these significant artifacts. I will highlight several artifacts from this collection to illustrate how they embody a distinct national style and methodology.
James F. Stark (Leeds University):
The Overbeck rejuvenator: Made in Grimsby, used throughout the world
Often dismissed as a “quack” medical device by historians and curators, the Ediswan-manufactured Rejuvenator was an electrotherapy device from the early twentieth century designed for use in the home. Its inventor, Otto Overbeck, made his name as a brewer’s chemist and was a skilled publicist, who used his credentials as a supposed member of the British scientific establishment, as well as the international prestige of the Ediswan Company. Overbeck was granted patents for various parts of the Rejuvenator in no fewer than eleven countries between 1924 and 1929, and he employed a complex marketing strategy, involving testimonies from users, medical professionals and Overbeck himself, as well as claims for the scientific foundation of electrotherapy.
This paper explores how Overbeck used his status as a trustworthy British man of science, together with a global patenting strategy, to persuade potential users that the Rejuvenator was an effective treatment for numerous ailments.
Karin Tybjerg (Medical Museion):
The nation’s body and the body of science: Human remains in biobanks and museums
Denmark has recently opened a National Biobank and in connection with its opening the director stated that it would allow “researchers of the country” to “follow a whole country and its diseases”. At the core of the project lies the connection between the biological material and the extended data on medicine, diagnoses and life courses available for Danish citizens.
Human remains are intriguing because they have changed from being museum exhibits of organs on human scale in the 18th century to microscopic samples of cells in modern biobanks. It lies between artifact and human, between individual and general and between flesh and data.
In the talk I will compare the biobank with the anatomical collections of the 19th and explore the relations between local bodily matter and biological data and between local, national and international strategies for collecting, storing and exchanging it.
Frode Weium (Norsk Teknisk Museum):
From Solovox to Soloton: the assimilation of foreign music technology in Norway
In the early 1950s the Norwegian radio manufacturer Norman Radio developed an electronic musical instrument called Soloton. The instrument was designed to be fitted under a piano and intended to accompany the piano with organ-like solo voices. It was based on foreign models, in particular the Solovox manufactured in the US by the Hammond Instrument Co. between 1940 and 1948. By studying the Soloton and its relation to the Solovox and other piano attachment instruments – and using examples from museum collections – this paper seeks to explore how new and foreign electronic music technology was assimilated in Norway in the 1950s.