Collection: Whipple Museum of the History of Science

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The Museum takes its name from Robert Stewart Whipple (1871–1953) who presented his collection of over 1,100 scientific instruments, and a similar number of rare books, to the University in 1944, along with an endowment for the ongoing expansion of the collection.

  The founding collection was rapidly augmented by the addition of a rich and varied selection of material transferred or loaned to the Museum by the University’s colleges and science departments. In addition, numerous objects have been purchased through a special acquisitions fund set up with Whipple’s bequest, as well as with support from other benefactors and funding bodies.

  The collections were Designated as internationally significant by Arts Council England in 1995.

  The Museum continues to pursue Whipple’s founding stipulation that it be “designed and maintained as a valuable teaching instrument and a cultural accessory to modern research.”

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: Not known

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  The Whipple Museum of the History of Science holds around 7,000 objects covering the academic discipline of history of science. It is internationally recognised as a centre for object-based research and teaching, and the Museum’s entire holdings have been Designated as internationally significant by Arts Council England. They comprise scientific instruments, apparatus, models, globes, ephemera, prints, photographs, books, and other materials.

  The concept of “science” has changed during the period covered by the collections; the Whipple Museum deems its meaning to be that as understood within the academic discipline of history of science. This is a capacious definition, incorporating diverse knowledge traditions and craft practices from the ancient world to the present, across the globe, and including practices now judged to fall outside the modern definition of science, such as astrology and phrenology. It also includes early mathematics and natural philosophy, and so embraces, for example, navigation, surveying and cartography, with their maps and charts as well as instruments. The collections do not generally extend into the history of technology, except where that technology was directly associated with the pursuit of scientific work (e.g. pocket electronic calculators). Although the collection does include a small quantity of material relating to the history of medicine, this is not an area of strength and the Museum does not collect or curate actively in the area.

  Although the collections cover the medieval period to the present day, the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries are best represented. There are no geographical restrictions on the scope of the collection; however, the great majority of the Museum’s objects derive from European knowledge traditions, reflecting the interests of our founding collector and subsequent patterns of preservation.

  Particular strengths of the collection include:

  • Medieval and early modern astronomy – including a small but choice selection of European and Islamic astrolabes, and what is likely the earliest surviving armillary sphere in the world;
  • Early modern practical mathematics – including a world-class collection of early English and European calculating devices and compendia by significant makers including Humfrey Cole, Charles Whitwell, Elias Allen, Richard Glynne, John Rowley, Edmund Culpeper, and many more. The Museum holds the world’s largest collection of instruments by the preeminent seventeenth-century London maker Henry Sutton;
  • Microscopes – a large and diverse collection of more than 500 examples from the seventeenth century to the present, representing numerous significant makers and designs, and particularly strong in Enlightenment-era British optical craft;
  • Sundials – with numerous examples of various portable designs, including ornate ivory diptych dials, ring dials, and various types of elaborate and complex universal equinoctial dials, mostly of sixteenth- to nineteenth-century continental European origin;
  • Pre-modern and modern observational astronomy – including significant telescopes such as William Herschel’s imposing ten-foot reflector and early English examples by Christopher Cock and John Yarwell, plus a diverse range of observatory instrumentation from the seventeenth century through the modern era of astrophysical research;
  • Surveying and navigation – centred on the European Enlightenment practices of precision measurement on land and sea, instruments include important early backstaffs, octants, and sextants, numerous examples of exquisitely engineered theodolites and related surveying devices, and a notable early dividing engine;
  • Metrology – including a diverse range of weights and measures, scales, metrological standards, and associated precision measuring instruments;
  • Models – the Museum holds one of the country’s richest collections of scientific models for teaching and research, including many anatomical and zoological models by preeminent makers including the Auzoux and Ziegler firms, as well as important mathematical, chemical, and physical models;
  • Scientific toys and educational materials – centred on Victorian practices of science in the home and school, objects include optical toys as well as a range of demonstrational devices;
  • Globes and planetaria – a notable strength of the Whipple’s collection, including significant early English terrestrial globes, a diverse selection of celestial globes, and one of the world’s largest collection of planetary globes, plus important planetaria including a fine grand orrery by George Adams Senior and an exquisite tabletop orrery by Nairne and Blunt.

  The Whipple Museum also holds a number of special collections that were purchased, gifted, or loaned as distinct collections. These include: the founding collection of around 1,100 scientific instruments and over 1,000 scientific books donated to the University by Robert Stuart Whipple in 1944 and forming the basis of the Whipple Museum and Whipple Library collections; a collection of physical apparatus used at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; a large collection of instruments, prototypes, and catalogues donated by Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company in recognition of its link with the Whipple Museum (R. S. Whipple was managing director of the Company); the Francis Hookham Collection of Handheld Electronic Calculators; and the Plant Sciences Collection of around 1,000 botanical teaching diagrams used in the Botany School’s teaching over the past 150 years.

  In addition, the Museum holds around 150 unaccessioned handling objects for use in school sessions, family activities, and outreach. These were largely acquired for the purpose of teaching through handling.

  The Museum also holds an extensive collection of scientific sales and trade literature, with over 10,000 pieces that range from single-page pamphlets to glossy hardbound catalogues. This ‘grey literature’ is fully catalogued but is not accessioned into the main collection; it is continually added to through donation and acquisition, and is primarily used to assist with curatorial and academic research into Museum objects.

  Weaknesses and gaps in the collection can mainly be found in the area of twentieth and twenty-first century research instrumentation. Although the collection holds a range of laboratory apparatus and instrumentation from this era, large gaps remain, often owing to the ever-increasing size of much modern lab equipment, as well as a growing tendency for instruments to be scrapped or ‘cannibalized’ soon after the end of their useful life. The sheer scale and diversity of modern research sciences also poses a problem for any attempt at systematic coverage, even under a localised Cambridge-only remit.

  The accessioned collections are used for display, research, and teaching. The Museum includes large changing exhibitions in its Special Exhibition Gallery and smaller changing displays in the Main Gallery, Learning Gallery, and Upper Gallery. It also welcomes 30–60 external researchers a year and supports a wide range of scholarly activities, including producing edited volumes of significant research work conducted on objects in the collection. The collection is also used for a range of object-based teaching across the undergraduate and graduate programmes in the Museum’s parent Department, History and Philosophy of Science. This includes supporting lectures, offering object-based seminars and handling sessions, providing training on material culture research methods, and supporting both undergraduate and graduate student research using the resources of the collection.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date:

  Licence: CC BY-NC