Science Museum Group Journal Issue 16

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 16

Issue 16 features a strong strain of research from within the Science Museum Group. Robert Gwynne brings together railway and computer histories by looking at the long engagement of the railways with data driven technologies; Abigail Wilson looks at the impact of Joseph Whitworth’s legacy on Manchester’s built environment; and Alex Rose discusses a collection of seismographs originally located at Eskdalemuir Observatory in Scotland. Charles Ormrod looks at the history of mechanised production in luxury goods while Pippi Carty-Hornsby discusses a methodology for capturing and preserving the disappearing (and often tacit) knowledge required to operate large working exhibits. In other articles, Curator Imogen Holmes-Roe discusses the history and direction of the Whitworth gallery, whilst David H Lee contributes a study of audience responses to a health exhibition in the USA with objectives to change behaviours. Our growing reviews section allows discussion of the crucial contemporary issues faced by museums. Here Subhadra Das discusses Corrine Fowler’s ‘Green Unpleasant Land’ while ‘Photography Off the Scale’ (eds Tomà¡Å¡ DvoÅ™à¡k and Jussi Parikka) is reviewed by Surya Bowyer.
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    From Renaissance medals to the Jaguar E-Type car bonnet: mechanised production and the making of luxury goods
    (2021-11-02)
    Ormrod, Charles
    It is often assumed that the development of mechanised production technology and the making of luxury goods are incompatible. Arising from familiar narratives of the Industrial Revolution and echoes of Arts and Crafts thinking, high volume commodities are seen as the obvious domain for advances in mechanised production and high-quality luxury or semi-luxury goods are associated with traditional hand-craft methods. But innovations in mechanised production have sometimes been driven by the manufacture of luxury goods, not commodities. The technology which led to the pressing of the Jaguar E-Type bonnet began with the stamping of Renaissance medals, prestigious objects to bestow the favour of popes and princes. The major eighteenth-century advance in the making of three-dimensional objects in sheet metal from stamped components, a direct ancestor of twentieth-century car body manufacture, came from the Sheffield manufacture of luxury candlesticks and tableware, using silver-plated and silver sheet metal.
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    Preserving skills and knowledge in heritage machinery operations
    (2021-11-02)
    Carty-Hornsby, Pippi
    This article details an approach to knowledge capture on a collection of working textile machinery at the Science and Industry Museum. The machinery collection dates between 1880 and 1955 and the knowledge capture process outlined in the case study was prompted by the retirement announcement of the last machine operator on staff with first-hand experience of the textile industry. Heritage machinery demonstrations provide a unique opportunity for visitors to museums to experience the sights, smells and sounds of Britain’s industrial past. However, with many of the operating roles in the sector being staffed by an ageing population, heritage machinery demonstrations are at risk of substantial knowledge loss over the coming years. Without intervention, many of the tacit skills and knowledge that the operators hold will be lost, along with the opportunity for the public to learn from and experience the machinery first-hand. The method outlined in this article includes a review of existing documentation, operation recording and interrogation of results, comparison and discussion with stakeholders, and production of documentation and resources. The results of this process included a set of documents that reflected both modern health and safety and conservation and collections care guidelines, as well as cross-media resources that can be used as a future training aid. Though the case study detailed here features textile machinery, it is applicable across many strands of heritage machinery and could provide a useful tool for similar ‘at-risk’ machinery operations in museums and other cultural institutions.
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    Philanthropy, industry and the city of Manchester: the impact of Sir Joseph Whitworth’s philanthropy on Manchester’s built environment
    (2021-11-02)
    Wilson, Abi
    Sir Joseph Whitworth was one of the most successful industrialists of nineteenth-century Manchester and made significant contributions to the development of engineering through improving precision and standardisation in machine tools. He also had an important and hitherto largely neglected impact on Manchester’s built environment through his posthumous philanthropy. This paper studies the interventions in the cityscape funded by Whitworth’s substantial legacy to assess how they influenced its development. Through the use of spatial analysis, I highlight the pivotal role of Whitworth and his legatees in the establishment of the Oxford Road educational corridor. Bringing together the history of philanthropy and the history of the built environment enables a reassessment of Whitworth’s ideological intentions and provides the means to expand the scholarly discourse on the development of the built environment to encompass the influence of individuals.
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