An Archive of Failed Inventions: the Museum of the Admiralty Compass Observatory
Resource type
Book chapter
Creator (person)
Dunn, Richard
Date published
2024
Abstract
Failure is a matter of judgment. There are also many ways in which an invention might be judged to have failed, whether in theory, practice, or originality. This chapter explores the ways in which a specialist museum created by a branch of the British Royal Navy collected and examined magnetic compasses in order to assess inventions, judging many as failures in the process. It was a function that began with the committee that recommended the creation of the Admiralty Compass Department, and continued in the later work of what became the Admiralty Compass Observatory (ACO). As well as being at the forefront of compass development, the ACO became a site at which the success and failure of one type of navigational instrument was judged, with the uses of its museum holdings demonstrating the value of failed instruments. As the example of Henry Constantine Jennings’s insulating compass will show, moreover, failure was not permanently fixed but subject to changes in theoretical understanding.
Book title
Failed Historical Scientific Instruments
Editor
Schechner, Sara J.
Talas, Sofia
Pagination
6-20
Publisher
Brill
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright