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Journal article
Collecting 21st-century science, technology and medicine
Museums are often associated exclusively with bygones. This can be problematic, especially for those who manage science, technology and medicine (STM) collections. In seeking to correct this misconception with contemporary collecting, they also face other problems, especially in scale and complexity. While acknowledging such challenges, this opinion piece proposes opportunities...Alberti, S J M M ; Cox, Elsa ; Phillipson, Tacye ; Taubman, Alison
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Journal article
Multi-individual microsatellite identification: a multiple genome approach to microsatellite design (MiMi)
Bespoke microsatellite marker panels are increasingly affordable and tractable to researchers and conservationists. The rate of microsatellite discovery is very high within a shotgun genomic data set, but extensive laboratory testing of markers is required for confirmation of amplification and polymorphism. By incorporating shotgun next‐generation sequencing data sets from multiple... -
Journal article
Collections development in hindsight: a numerical analysis of the Science and Technology collections of National Museums Scotland since 1855
Long term and bulk patterns in both the accessioning and deaccessioning of the Science and Technology collections of National Museums Scotland were revealed within their digital database records. This makes use of bulk analysis of records to show historic patterns which can inform current activities. The current and recent selection...Phillipson, Tacye
collections development, disposal, collecting, Database, and display
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Journal article
A laboratory for multi-century science
Charles Cockell and colleagues consider what it takes to establish and maintain an experiment that lasts for decades – or even for centuries.Cockell, Charles S ; Santomartino, Rosa ; McMahon, Sean ; Reekie, Philippe ; Alberti, S J M M …
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Journal article
A long-term approach creates impact
Working with three partner universities and a secondary school to make sure the Parasites exhibition was accurate and cutting edge and that it was also fit for purpose and suited our audiences. Parasites: Battle for Survival opened on 5 December at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, in partnership with...Goggins, Sophie
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Journal article
Projecting the Museum: moving images in, and of, Scotland's national museum
The century-long engagement of museums with the moving image is examined through a case study of its deployment by National Museums Scotland (inclusive of its predecessor organisations the Royal Scottish Museum and the Royal Museum of Scotland). The study engages the academic genres of film studies and museum studies to...Swinney, Geoffrey N
Cinema, television, video, film, Royal Scottish Museum, National Museums Scotland, and historical geography
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Journal article
Going to pieces: investigating the deliberate destruction of Late Bronze Age swords and spearheads
The deliberate destruction of Late Bronze Age swords and spearheads has been widely recognised across Europe. This observation has typically relied on the obvious nature of the destruction, such as the bending of blades or the crushing of sockets, and the association of multiple broken pieces. These obvious acts have...Knight, Matthew G
Bronze Age metalwork, spearheads, experimental archaeology, Fragmentation, and swords
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Journal article
Disposal case study: National Museums Scotland
Tacye Phillipson explains why looking at past disposals can help inform future work.Phillipson, Tacye
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Journal article
Special issue: Shaping Scientific Instrument Collections
There is an extensive literature on the history of what we now term scientific instruments. As a result, we know a great deal about how devices such as telescopes, clocks and astrolabes were made and used, especially those dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Many of these artefacts...Alberti, S J M M
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Book chapter
The art and science of replication. Copies and copying in the multi-disciplinary museum
Few institutions are warier of copies than museums. Few fields of knowledge are more prone to denounce copies as fake than the heritage field. Few discourses are as concerned with authenticity, aura, originals and provenance as those concerning exhibiting and collecting. So why is it that these are institutions, fields...Alberti, S J M M ; Blackwell, Alice ; Davidson, Peter ; Goldberg, D Martin ; Swinney, Geoffrey N
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Uses and audiences for the Heritage of Contemporary Science
Report on a workshop of the Universeum Working Group for the Preservation of Recent Heritage of Science in the University, at the University of Glasgow. Universeum’s Working Group for the Preservation of RHS is concerned with the study, conservation and interpretation of the heritage of science, technology and medicine produced...Wittje, Roland ; Alberti, S J M M
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Conference paper (published)
TIM, PAT and ISAAC: synthetic speech on display at the National Museum of Scotland
In its communications gallery, staff at National Museums Scotland were keen to include a fundamental of human communication – speech. This paper will outline a display of speech mediated by machines, from the experiments first speaking clock to the now omnipresent synthetic voices of devices of satnavs and smoke alarms....Taubman, Alison
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Book chapter
Tangled up in blue: the role of riebeckite felsite in Neolithic Shetland
The social processes involved in acquiring flint and stone in the Neolithic began to be considered over thirty years ago, promoting a more dynamic view of past extraction processes. Whether by quarrying, mining or surface retrieval, the geographic source locations of raw materials and their resultant archaeological sites have been...Cooney, Gabriel ; Megarry, William ; Markham, Mik ; Gilhooly, Bernard ; O’Neill, Brendan …
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Collecting 21st-Century Science, Technology and Medicine in Scotland
On 6 June 2017 a group of museum professionals with shared interests in contemporary collecting science, technology and medicine assembled at the National Museum of Scotland to share best practice and lessons learned in this area. After presentations from some of those involved in Scottish collections, different perspectives were provided...Robertson, Haileigh ; Goggins, Sophie ; Alberti, S J M M
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Book chapter
Technologies of the self: painted pebbles, ornaments and the burial
During the late 1st millennium BC into the early 1st millennium AD, the small island of Unst in the far north of the Shetland (and British) Isles was home to well-established and connected farming and fishing communities. The Iron Age settlement at Milla Skerra was occupied for at least 500...Goldberg, D Martin ; Hunter, Fraser
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Conference paper (published)
One model for the care of corporate heritage: The BT Connected Earth partnership in practice since 2002
Connected Earth is a web based museum of the history of communication,underpinned by a series of major physical collections, distributed among a network of museums around the UK. It represents a £6 million investment by BT (British Telecommunications plc), to promote the widest possible access to its collections of historical...Taubman, Alison
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Journal article
Collecting Broadband: the social context for the e-Scotland collection
This is a summary of a project begun last year to collect objects to represent the spread of broadband across Scotland. Given the impact of the internet on all our lives, this collection can be interpreted from a social historical perspective as much as from a technological one. It also...Taubman, Alison
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Book chapter
Comments on Seventeenth Century Lenses and Projection.
Various attempts have been made to understand the role of the camera obscura in Renaissance painting. This study tries to understand the actual practice necessary to produce the image. Based on original artifacts as well as reconstructions I will first explore the functioning and making of the device, especially that...Staubermann, Klaus
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Book
Making scientific instruments in the industrial revolution
This book looks at the four main, and two lesser, English centres known for instrument production outside the capital: Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield, along with the older population centres in Bristol and York. Making wide use of new sources, Dr Morrison-Low, curator of history of science at the National...Morrison-Low, A D
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Journal article
Technology and skill: dividing engines in the Nineteenth Century
Recent studies in the making of scientific knowledge have demonstrated that science and technology are mutually dependant on each other. One example here is the manufacture of scientific instruments. Both instrument makers’ tools and practices are essential for shaping the functioning of an instrument and thereby shaping later instrument users’...Staubermann, Klaus
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Conference paper (published)
Terminology and public access: developing a thesaurus of telecommunication object names
The presentation will outline plans for the development of a terminology database for use by both a specialist and general audience. It will examine work carried out to date to create a classification system which both specialist and non-specialist groups can use to access the Connected Earth collections, and then...Taubman, Alison
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Journal article
Geschichte erleben
Historic reconstructions have become a decisive tool in many areas of science and technology studies over the past few decades. In this article I present some highly significant scientific apparatus designed during the 19th century. I show how, by rebuilding these artefacts and practising with them, significant historical insights can...Staubermann, Klaus
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Journal article
School microscopes in the Sixties.
Nuttall, R H
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Book chapter
Electric telegraph to e-Scotland:nNetworking remote and rural communities
There are said to be parallels in the impact that the advent of the telegraph and the internet had on their respective societies. This chapter looks at two examples of state intervention and subsidy in the development of those two communications infrastructures in remote and rural areas of Scotland, at...Taubman, Alison
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Book chapter
Instrument and Image: inside the Nineteenth Century scientific lantern slide
This 7th volume in the Artefacts series looks at a number of significant instruments that were created to serve various scientific purposes. The contributors examine the roles these instruments played both as scientific devices developed to advance our knowledge of the world and as cultural artifacts manufactured and used in...Staubermann, Klaus
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Book
Illuminating instruments
This 7th volume in the Artefacts series looks at a number of significant instruments that were created to serve various scientific purposes. The contributors examine the roles these instruments played both as scientific devices developed to advance our knowledge of the world and as cultural artifacts manufactured and used in... -
Journal article
What machine tools can tell us about historic skills and knowledge.
This article aims to promote the study of skills and practices through the examination of historic machine tools. Machine tools in museum collections offer an ideal resource for the investigation of historic practices and their material cultures. National Museums Scotland holds a unique collection of historic machine tools and examples...Staubermann, Klaus
Lathes, Collections, Training, Practices, Museums, Machine tools , and Skills
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Journal article
Arms and the robot: Freddy and his, her, or its toys.
One of a collection of papers presented at Musee des Arts et Metiers in 2006 and 2008.Phillipson, Tacye
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Journal article
The Mikrops Projektascope by Flatters & Garnett
Nuttall, R H
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Book
The traction engine in Scotland
Traction engines were used in Scotland from the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1960s – for road haulage, powering threshing mills, ploughing and, in steam roller form, in road making. The book explores their history, with particular focus on National Museum Scotland’s 1907 Marshall traction engine and its...Hayward, Alexander
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Book
Reconstructions: recreating science and technology of the past
Historic reconstructions have become a decisive tool in the history of science and technology. The book brings together key studies of recently completed reconstruction projects.Staubermann, Klaus
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Journal article
Early Navigation Instruments in Scotland
Morrison-Low, A D
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Conference paper (published)
If mobile is the answer, what was the question?
Despite an ever-increasing urgency within institutions to deliver a mobile project, in the experience of National Museums Scotland and National Museum Wales, significant challenges exist in securing cross-departmental teams for these projects, managing internal expectations, and ensuring that the project is aligned with the institution’s core mission. To overcome these...Wallace, Hugh ; Tallon, Loic ; James, Dafydd
organizational systems, mobile, design processes, and digital strategy