Pages tagged “museum”

07 May 2013

News flash: broken stuff continues to exist

Massive news flash/amazing coincidental discovery: broken objects do not cease to exist. Having recently made a trip to the Bowes museum, this afternoon I had the pleasure of a personalised tour of Dr. Nicky Reeves’s exhibition at the Whipple museum of the History of Science. Nicky’s exhibition touches on a variety of subjects, mentions Jeremiah Dixon and encases a carefully calculated amount of stuff - the “bits” of scientific endeavour. Nicky and I mused about how we view these “bits” today; how they are treated once they enter the domain of the archive/museum; how they might have looked at the time they were used; and their different meanings in different contexts.

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29 Apr 2013

Broken thermometers no longer exist

From a caption at the exhibition at the Bowes museum, Barnard Castle (Jeremiah Dixon - Scientist, Surveyor and Stargazer): This thermometer is probably identical to those taken to Cape Town by Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason in 1761. The actual thermometers they used got broken on the way home, so no longer exist. If things that got broken ceased to exist, a lot of museum exhibits would take on a whole new dimension.

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