Science Museum Group Journal Issue 10

This year is significant both as the centenary of women’s suffrage and the Year of Engineering. In our final issue of 2018, we celebrate these significant markers by turning the spotlight on women scientists with a mini-collection of special papers. Read about the pioneering work of Hertha Ayrton, the first female member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and Blanche Thornycroft, a true pioneer among female naval architects. Explore the under-acknowledged role of women in the railways in the early twentieth century, find out what photographs can say about attitudes towards women scientists, and discover how well (or not) Wikipedia represents women engineers today. You’ll also find articles on subjects ranging from Victorian technologies of display to the challenges of exhibiting contemporary science, from the changing ‘voices’ of objects over time to an enlightening review of three exhibitions by artist Tacita Dean. We’re sure you’ll agree that Issue 10 of the Science Museum Group Journal has something for everyone.

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English

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11

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The Panstereomachia, Madame Tussaud’s and the Heraldic Exhibition: the art and science of displaying the medieval past in nineteenth-century London
(2018-11-14)
Gribling, Barbara
‘Panstereomachia. This title, as long as a man’s arm, belongs to an exhibition of a novel kind, which was opened on Monday, 19th June, 1826.’ Devised by Charles Bullock, the exhibit featured a large model of the ‘memorable battle of Poictiers’ where the English hero, Edward the Black Prince, defeated French forces in 1356[1] The exhibit spoke to a burgeoning market for historically-themed exhibitions and a growing fascination with the Middle Ages in the nineteenth century. A key selling point of the exhibit was its mysterious name which alluded to a new type of exhibition experience. Yet the Panstereomachia was only one of many ‘educational’ exhibits which employed old and new technology to bring the past to life in order to edify and entertain new consumer audiences. This essay will trace three exhibitions across the nineteenth century to assess how exhibitors drew on science and technology to offer competing visions of the medieval past. Moving from the Panstereomachia model, it will look at the introduction of medieval-themed figures and tableaux at Madame Tussaud’s from the mid nineteenth century before exploring the 1894 Heraldic Exhibition and the debate over the preservation of medieval artefacts. Underpinning this discussion are two key questions: What role did technology play in the ways in which people exhibited and accessed the past historically? How can visual and material culture inform our understanding of shifting notions of the Middle Ages?
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The life and material culture of Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854–1923): suffragette, physicist, mathematician and inventor
(2018-11-14)
Bruton, Elizabeth
Suffragette, physicist, mathematician and inventor: in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when few women had access to opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), Englishwoman Hertha Marks Ayrton held all these roles and was a strong advocate for social justice, especially suffrage for women. Using material from the Science Museum archives, this paper explores the material culture of Ayrton’s career and work and provides an insight into issues and intersections of gender, science, and technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article engages with the material culture of Ayrton’s work across multiple fields in STEM. Firstly, it discusses the line-divider, a mathematical tool and engineering drawing instrument Ayrton developed while still an undergraduate at Cambridge and later patented. This was the first of twenty-six patents Ayrton was granted during her lifetime. Next, the paper turns to the electric arc. Ayrton made notable contributions to the understanding of this early and powerful form of electric lighting, and quite literally published the textbook on it. Thirdly, the paper looks at the ‘Ayrton anti-gas fan’, which was distributed in thousands and used to dissipate gas in the trenches on the Western Front during the First World War. Lastly, this paper will explore the impact of gender on Ayrton’s achievements and recognition. Ayrton was elected the first female member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), the premier British institution of electrical and electronic engineering, in 1899. However, her nomination as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1902 was declined because of her gender.
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From 2D to 3D: the story of graphene in objects
(2018-11-14)
Baines, Sarah
First isolated using sticky tape in Manchester in 2004, graphene is a nanoscience breakthrough which has captured the imagination of the press and the scientific community. Despite the obvious hook of the isolation story, nanoscience is a challenging topic to present in a museum exhibition. The Wonder Materials exhibition answered this challenge by introducing objects which would be familiar and relatable to visitors. This paper examines this approach using ten case-study objects featured in the exhibition to illustrate discussion of representation of the material culture of contemporary science in museum exhibitions, and to examine some of the curatorial methods used by the content team to make an intangible nanomaterial feel more real for visitors.
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Uncovering the secrets of Canadian Pacific
(2018-11-14)
Peacock, Becky
Canadian Pacific is known as being the oldest and fastest surviving Merchant Navy class locomotive in preservation, but she hides a secret: she was built in 1941 at Eastleigh Works, Hampshire, where about half of the workforce were female. While she now stands as a testament of the work of these female engineers who were employed on the railway during the Second World War, their achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the long history of women working on the railway as early as 1840. The First World War opened up the opportunities available to women on the railway, throwing them into areas previously only occupied by men. Women fought prejudice to show that they were capable workers in the fields that were opened to them, but it all came to an end in peacetime when women were forced back into ‘female’ jobs. The Second World War again brought about change, with women being employed in more roles than ever before.
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Wired-up in white organdie: framing women’s scientific labour at the Burden Neurological Institute
(2018-11-14)
Saunders, David
The Burden Neurological Institute (BNI) is widely considered one of the central sites in the history of British neuroscience. Founded in 1939 to investigate the anatomy, functions, and disorders of the human brain, the BNI rapidly established a reputation as a world-leading centre of research and expertise. Due to the rich insights offered by the BNI Papers, held in the archives of the Science Museum, London, the work of the BNI has become a popular topic among historians of science and technology. However, one key omission in both the archival record and in subsequent historical accounts has been the BNI’s prominent employment of women as researchers, technicians and laboratory assistants. To address this absence, this article examines the comparatively underutilised photographic collections of the BNI Papers, in which women feature more prominently. However, rather than providing an unproblematic ‘window’ onto the experiences of these scientific workers, this article contends that the photographs in question ‘frame’ women’s labour in particular ways so as to devalue, obscure and erase their contributions to the BNI’s much-lauded achievements. The article considers three such frames: the objectification of women as the subjects, rather than the practitioners, of neuroscientific research; the elision of women’s scientific, domestic, and familial roles; and the visual equation of women’s labour with that of the machine. The article concludes by considering some of the ways in which critiques of visual framing might be integrated into both future historical accounts and museum display practices.
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Editorial
(2018-11-14)
Locker, Anne
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Ventriloquised voices: the Science Museum and the Hartree Differential Analyser
(2018-11-14)
Ritchie, Tom
This article builds on previous literature on museums and material culture by presenting an examination of the changing stories that a particular object — a rebuilt version of Douglas Hartree’s Differential Analyser — has been used to tell in the Science Museum, London. The analogy of ventriloquism is introduced to explore the ways that the object has been presented and interpreted in the Museum. It is used to illuminate how objects can carry the various meanings, interests, and prejudices (conscious and unconscious) of the human actors involved in their creation, collection and display. The article describes how the voices ‘ventriloquised’ through Hartree’s rebuilt ‘Trainbox’ have imbued this later version of the machine with the physical and instrumental functions of the original Analyser to make the object ‘fit’ with varying stories of computation, differential analysis, and models. The paper argues that the voices ventriloquised through the Trainbox have turned the object into the ‘material polyglot’ that sits in the Information Age gallery of the Science Museum today. The article concludes with the question of whether we can truly understand how objects change at the ‘hands-on’ level in museums, without including the simultaneous stories that an object shares with its audiences.
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Engineering and the family in business: Blanche Coules Thornycroft, naval architecture and engineering design
(2018-11-14)
Harcourt, Keith
;
Edwards, Roy
This paper seeks to examine and contextualise the role of Blanche Thornycroft within her family business of John I. Thornycroft in the first half of the twentieth century. The role of Blanche in assisting her father and, after his death, the Thornycroft Company in collecting experimental data informed the design of many vessels. Her role in testing Coastal Motor Boats is explored using the archival material discovered during the ARHC funded project ‘Business, government and the workplace: John I. Thornycroft & Company Limited, and the Great War’.
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Tacita Dean: LANDSCAPE, PORTRAIT, STILL LIFE
(2018-11-14)
Barrett, Katy
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The history of women in engineering on Wikipedia
(2018-11-14)
White, Alice
This paper explores the representation of the history of women in engineering as it appears on the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. Using biography pages on women engineers for a high-level quantitative overview, and the ‘History of women in engineering’ page as a specific example for qualitative examination, this research highlights inequalities in how women engineers are represented compared with men engineers. There are significantly fewer Wikipedia biography articles on women engineers compared with men engineers, and those articles are far less central and findable, with fewer incoming links. The article page on the ‘History of women in engineering’ is of poor quality and is flagged as such to readers. Here, the under-representation of women engineers on Wikipedia is set in the specific context of Wikipedia. The context of societal differences beyond the internet is also explored. The paper concludes by discussing practical attempts to redress the imbalance, and challenges to consider in planning future efforts.
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Science Museum Group Journal Issue 10

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 10

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