Robert Gwynne

Most museums reinvent themselves periodically. The process is never easy, and it becomes more difficult and costly when displays are built around such massive objects as steam locomotives. The Cité du Train in Mulhouse and the Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum in Utrecht have accomplished this dramatic reinterpretation.1 They are appropriate venues for such a transformation. France not only introduced the widely emulated high-speed Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) some thirty years ago, but its TGV Est, which stops in Mulhouse on its way to Switzerland, is the fastest passenger train in the world.2 The rail system in the much smaller but more densely populated Netherlands is the most intensively used on the Continent.

The French museum opened at its permanent site in 1976 to display steam locomotives and historic rolling stock formerly housed at the Mulhouse Nord railway depot. Although its geographic location in Alsace was not a natural tourist destination for either French nationals or foreign visitors, this Musée Nationale du Chemin de Fer became a popular attraction. Attendance fell over time, however, and the museum closed in December 2003 when work started on an extensive reconfiguration designed by architect (and former scenographer) François Seigneur. That process, which increased the size of the museum to 15,000 square meters and cost €8.6 million (over $12.3 million at current exchange rates), is the subject of a four-minute film shown on-site. Administration of the transformed facility was transferred to the entrepreneurial culturespaces,3 which performs this service for a number of French museums and historical sites. Since the typical French museum is staffed by government employees and closes one day each week, both the outsourcing and the “7 sur 7” schedule seem almost as radical as the actual recasting of the display.

Fig. 1 An 0-3-0 “Bourbonnais” locomotive welcomes visitors to the striking new building at the French National Railway Museum, now called “Cité du Train” (author photo).

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Rhine, the National Railway Museum of the Netherlands was undertaking its own renewal project. The museum had begun humbly enough in the mid-1920s to display rail-related ephemera. It was another decade before it began to preserve historically significant equipment, and some items were destroyed during the Second World War. It opened at its permanent site—the remodeled Maliebaan station—in 1954, but despite renovations in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, most of its collection of rolling stock—now augmented by a number of trams— was open to the weather. Major renovations began in 2003, when the station building was restored to its nineteenth-century appearance, and a new facility was built on the other side of the still-existing tracks to contain the “four worlds” described below. The complex reopened in 2005, at a cost of €35 million (over $50 million in today’s currency).

This review will compare the two facilities, presenting what typical visitors will see (and miss seeing) in each of these museums dedicated to the history of the train.

Visitors to the French museum may arrive by automobile (Michelin’s Guide Vert calls it “worth a detour”) or, more appropriately, by train. Both the high-speed TGV Est and the slower Train Corail halt in Mulhouse, where the utilitarian station is decorated with posters of the British-built, nineteenth-century, brass-clad, and flag-draped PO locomotive that pulled the train used by the president of France. After that brief introduction to the “golden age” of rail, however, passengers must board a city bus for the uninspiring ramble through residential and industrial zones to the edge of Mulhouse before they reach the museum where “Cité du Train” is spelled out in neon over the entrance, and a plinthed tank engine serves as a threedimensional logo (fig. 1). The Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum, on the other hand, is located near the city center, one of a cluster of museums and churches in Utrecht’s museum district, and is accessible by taxi, by bus, or—for the energetic—by foot. Its exterior gives few signs of the function the station has served for more than fifty years, restored as it is to the solid and unassuming character popularly associated with the Dutch, and as suitable to a shipping company or a law firm as to a museum (fig. 2).

Fig. 2 The entrance to the Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum at Utrecht seems understated, given the experience the museum offers (author photo).

In both cases, the step through the doorway is a revelation. Seigneur may have expended little architectural energy on the decorated shed that encloses the Cité du Train, but his scenographic experience is clearly in evidence inside its walls. After paying an entrance fee of €7.60 to €10 (children under seven are admitted free) and receiving audioguides, visitors pass through double doors, first into a bright orange space that heightens excitement, and then into what could be the set of a cinematic extravaganza. Within this vast, darkened “studio,” brightly lit scenarios are introduced by character mannequins that “come to life” when visitors approach. Peasants go off to market, a French president is left behind in his nightgown, the railcar arriving at the seaside in “The Holiday Train” is escorted by flying seagulls, and the engine in “Railways and Mountains” pushes through “snow” formed from polystyrene (fig. 3). Like “Official Trains,” “Railways and War,” “The Railway Workers,” and “The Journey,” these scenes reinforce the cinematic nature of the museum with archival film footage and fully dressed sets that include railway paraphernalia and equipment such as notice boards, distinctive seating, and water columns. The total is charming and— often literally—dazzling. Visitors in fact have cause to be grateful for the audioguides that free them from trying to read the (excellent) guidebook in the near dark. (The visual fatigue stemming from the extreme contrast in light levels is another story.) The guides are an excellent application of modern technology on one of the linguistic boundaries of Europe, since they may be tuned to French, English, or German and can even translate the “conversations” held by the mannequins. Despite their advantages, they do suggest that the displays were created with an adult audience in mind, a notion reinforced by the strictly linear progression from one scene to another, and overall, the spectacle rarely accommodates the social interaction that so often marks a museum visit. The locomotives themselves are spectacular, particularly—although its effect may be read as somewhat gruesome—the “Consolidation” steam engine, shown on its side as if the French Resistance had just blown up the track. The accompanying film fleshes out the work of the railways in the Second World War, but visitors are advised to read the guidebook to fully understand the story. At the end of this experience, visitors exit through a set of double doors and a second bright orange corridor into a glassed-in space where the café is located, and they may then enter the original museum building that houses “The Railway Adventure.” Here the overall impression is that little has changed since the original museum opened: large technical diagrams and ranks of locomotives and rolling stock prevail, intermittently punctuated by the sound of the 1949 Caso “Hudson” steam engine on rollers clanking into action, accompanied by a soundtrack of it steaming away. An adjoining play area is a nod to interactivity for families whose children have been bored by too much “spectacle.”

Fig. 3 The “Railways and Mountains” display features a Snow-Plough ZR1 “Aurillac” (built by the American Locomotive Company in 1908) pushing through a simulated snow-covered line (author photo).

The Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum is a generally more family-oriented experience. Upon entering the Maliebaan facility, one sees (and may photograph) the grand and quietly ostentatious “Royal Waiting Room,” transplanted from the Staatsspoor station in The Hague that was demolished in 1973. (Given the unassuming character of most stations in the Netherlands, this may be a greater surprise to Dutch visitors than for those accustomed to the glories of the Gare de Lyon, Grand Central Station, St. Pancras International, or even York.) The Royal Waiting Room itself is physically offlimits to visitors, but everywhere else there are a variety of playful means of connecting with the history of railways in the Netherlands. Kept luggage is open to view, and “Pepper’s ghost” gives a glimpse of rail travel in the nineteenth century. Life-sized cutouts of uniformed railway staff invite visitors to climb aboard, look inside, and play with interactive devices that are cleverly placed and camera-friendly. Admission (€9.50 to €12.50) is transacted, appropriately enough, at a ticket window in the station, and tickets-inhand visitors then exit the station and cross the railway tracks to explore the four different “worlds” in the new section. The first world of “The Great Discovery” (early nineteenth century) is not actually the first to be encountered, that location being unaccountably occupied by what is technically World 4, a large hall with trains called “The Workshop” (fig. 4). It is, however, brilliantly lit for the cameraphone generation, and it allows visitors to walk under a steam locomotive raised high on a gantry, so that its workings are easier to examine than would be the case were it displayed over an inspection pit as happens at Mulhouse, York, and other railway museums eager to exploit a locomotive’s hidden parts. Human “edutrainers” are on hand to explain what visitors are seeing. “Great Discovery” also uses an audioguide and a lift that “journeys back in time” to introduce the first passenger train in the Netherlands. As at the Cité du Train, the initial effect is cinematic, but the audioguide commentary, replica buildings, and range of objects combine to shape how “Die Arend” came to haul the first passenger train out of Amsterdam in 1839. “Great Discovery” visitors exit through rooms seen peripherally upon entry, an idiosyncratic gallery showing pictures of early railways in the Netherlands. World 2 is called “Dream Travels”—international trains at the turn of the twentieth century—and, somewhat oddly, uses the theme of the Orient Express to convey the possibilities of this kind of transportation. Visitors in need of a respite will appreciate the comfortable theater in this world and its films of certain aspects of railway history. Visitors in need of a sandwich will head toward the café, where they sit at tables decorated with locomotives while they look at real locomotives visible in “The Workshop” next door. World 3 presents the “Steel Monsters” of the 1930s and 1940s, but it does so via “Grandfather’s Attic,” an eclectic display of railway memorabilia, models, posters, and other ephemera, as well as via a “dark ride.” This is less a ghost train designed by social historians than an enjoyable—and unusual—three minutes of real trains and mannequins in dramatic interaction. Throughout, the displays and simple interactives allow adults and children to experience trains and railways together.

Fig. 4 Glasgow-built Nederlandsche Rhijnspoorweg-Maatschappij (NRS) number 107 of 1889 dominates “The Workshop” part of the Nederlands Spoorweg- museum (author photo).

Overall, both museums have opted for spectacle but have done so in ways reflective of their culture. The Cité du Train appears both somewhat grand and somewhat exclusive; the Dutch, as practical as their rail network is functional, have nuanced their approach to appeal to a family-centered audience. The “dark ride” borrows from theme parks, while the excellent miniature railway that goes around a lake and through a tunnel appeals to the kid in all of us. The Cité du Train hopes to add its own miniature train system, and it also wants to connect to the existing railway when another section of the TGV network is complete. Utrecht, meanwhile, has its own station and runs regular trips with historic railcars from the museum onto the main line. Neither facility brings the history of the train into the twenty-first century—or even into the late twentieth, for that matter. Still, both museums are well worth the journey. For nonspecialists, however, especially those visiting with children, Utrecht’s interactive displays and activities are more appealing—certainly, its “dark ride” is guaranteed to excite even the most jaded of museum goers, regardless of age.

2 The success of TGV transport has spelled the end of low-cost flights from the local airport to the capital, Paris.

3 The collapsed spelling and partial-boldface type convey the company’s intent to unify culture and espace (space).

Robert Gwynne is exhibitions and creative content developer at the National Railway Museum, York, UK, and a member of the team planning that museum’s £20 million redisplay, scheduled to open in 2012. He thanks the Trevor Walden Trust for funding his study-visit to the facilities reviewed here.

©2009 by the Society for the History of Technology.

Fig. 1 A panoramic view of the city of Kavala, circa 1930. Most of the tobacco warehouses were located on the coastline. (Reproduced courtesy of the Institute of Archeology and the Sciences of Antiquity, Paul Collart Collection.)

In the mid-nineteenth century, Kavala developed into one of the most important tobacco-processing centers in the Balkans, attracting the commercial interest of the Habsburg Empire, England, France, Egypt, and even the United States. A crucial reason for the cultivation of the tobacco crop in this area, then under Ottoman occupation, was that the sultan had forbidden Turks from growing it. Because of this restriction, both tobacco cultivation and the tobacco trade passed into the hands of Greek merchants. Smoking soon became a popular habit among the Greeks and the tobacco trade boomed. Facilitated by ideal climate and soil conditions, the area around Kavala developed into one of the main tobacco-producing centers in the country, and the city became a major export harbor (fig. 1). By 1913, there were sixty-one tobacco companies registered in the city and close to 6,000 workers in the industry. Warehouses of a distinct architectural style were built at that time and still stand as important landmarks, testaments to the close bond between the tobacco trade and the city’s political and social history.1

To honor that history, in 1996 the city’s small ethnographic museum organized an exhibition called Kavala: The Tobacco City of Yesterday. Artifacts related to the cultivation and processing of tobacco leaves as well as photographs and other memorabilia were donated by families of local tobacco merchants and workers. Public attendance exceeded all expectations, resulting in a growing interest in the city’s history. Complemented and enhanced over time, this exhibition became the basis for a permanent museum, and on 5 April 2003, supported by the municipal authorities, the first tobacco museum in the country opened to the public. It was (and still is) housed in a small and generally unsuitable space, the ground floor of the Greek Organization of Tobacco building, a choice dictated by financial constraints. In less than 700 square meters (7,500 square feet), the museum covers more than 120 years of tobacco history and displays artifacts ranging from those associated with the rural production and commercial processing of tobacco to the manufacture of cigars and the culture of tobacco use.2

Fig. 2 The first Greek patented machine for producing cigars, circa 1925. (Reproduced courtesy of the Tobacco Museum of the City of Kavala.)

The museum presents Kavala as the “Mecca of tobacco” in the late nineteenth century, a city that owes most of its recent history to the production and processing of tobacco and to the tobacco workers’ movement of the early twentieth century. The museum’s illustrated narrative of the technological and partly social history of tobacco processing in Kavala conveys a linear view of technological progress and a conventional, nonsociological shaping of technological artifacts. It does, however, succeed in communicating the importance of material objects in people’s lives. Approximately a thousand objects are on display in this cramped space, which unfortunately means that it is all too easy to miss some of them—even though they are all significant artifacts in the story of the tobacco industry. One easily overlooked item of special interest, for example, is a small machine for producing cigars, the first of its kind in Greece, which was patented in 1925 (fig. 2).

Visitors are free to explore the permanent exhibition on their own, guided by very short descriptions placed among the artifacts as well as by several stories told through vivid photographs hanging on the walls. The collection itself is divided into seven themes that are treated in succession in the single floor of the museum. Artifacts related to tobacco cultivation appear first, followed by those associated with traditional tobacco processing in the city’s warehouses; the introduction of the tonga—a new pressing machine for producing the tobacco bales—and the gradual mechanization of the process; the production of sample tobacco bales and their introduction to the market; references to significant local tobacco merchants and their families; quick narratives about the tobacco unions and unionists; and last, artifacts related to finished tobacco products like cigarettes and cigars. A few brief words about some of these sections are in order.

Once past the building’s unremarkable entrance, visitors (who pay no entrance fee) first encounter a number of very well-preserved tools used in tobacco fields during planting and cultivation and in farmers’ storehouses for the preparation of tobacco bales. The stitching of the leaves onto long needles and their subsequent stringing into bundles is reenacted at the end of the first gallery, highlighting the involvement of the farmer’s entire family in the process and their utter dependence on tobacco production. The exhibit walks visitors through traditional growing practices and illustrates the time and care needed to produce tobacco leaves. A wide variety of photographs and additional artifacts provide a broader view of the rural culture of the tobacco cultivator.

Fig. 3 Two tonga presses exhibited next to each other. The tobacco leaves were thrown inside the wooden box and pressed on the top either by a heavy iron object or, later on, by a press operated manually by a winch. (Reproduced courtesy of the Tobacco Museum of the City of Kavala.)

Visitors are then ushered into a gallery that tells the story of the traditional tobacco-production process, which began as soon as the leaves arrived in the city’s warehouses. Until the late 1920s, tobacco was processed entirely by hand. The processing took place on the upper floors of the warehouses, called salonia, where both men and women were employed. The work was divided between the sexes to form two main areas of expertise integrated into a clear hierarchy. The men (the dektsides, or exastratzides) were responsible for the initial division of the tobacco leaves by quality. They sat in pairs on rush mats on the floor next to the windows. Until the warehouses were fitted with electric lighting, positions adjacent to the windows were privileged over all the others. Younger and less experienced pickers were responsible for the second and third selections, and they too sat in pairs, though back-to-back. Each pair of experienced pickers had a female worker (the pastaltzou) sitting cross-legged about half a meter away. She was responsible for the lower-quality tobacco leaves and for stacking the chosen leaves into small piles (pastalia); in other words, she assisted the dektsides in the menial task of stacking the tobacco leaves. Women were barred from becoming dektsides, which preserved gender-based power relations within the workplace.3 This story is told through revealing photographs though with no other direct reference to the gendered nature of the tobacco work, or even to the multiethnic composition of worker’s groups.

Fig. 4 Female tobacco workers separating leaves into five groups by quality. The leaves were then thrown into the tonga press in order to produce the final tobacco bale. (Reproduced courtesy of the Tobacco Museum of the City of Kavala.)

Arranged chronologically, the artifacts that follow depict a period of political unrest, when tobacco unionists clashed with powerful merchants and the state, and it also covers the introduction of technology into the tobacco workplace. The financial crisis of 1929 and the world depression that followed made traditional methods of processing tobacco too expensive and time-consuming. Consequently, most of Kavala’s tobacco merchants attempted to replace their manpower with the more efficient tonga presses (fig. 3). Visitors encounter a rich array of artifacts here as they end their way through a series of reenactments of the tonga process. In the common parlance of the tobacco workers themselves, “tonga” referred not only to the pressing machinery itself, but also to the entire processing method brought about by the introduction of the new technology into the workplace—and often its finished product as well, the tobacco bale. “Tonga” retains the same multilayered significance in later analyses of the tobacco labor movement (fig. 4).

When Greece’s largest tobacco-processing firm, the Gar y Tobacco Company of Kavala, introduced the first trial machinery into its commercial salonia in 1930 in collaboration with the American Tobacco Company, the workers did not balk. They still harbored the illusion that the introduction of the new production technology would not affect their jobs. The prevailing sentiment, bolstered by the opinions of the tobacco technicians themselves, was that the new processing machinery produced a more perishable product, because tobacco leaves carelessly pressed by tonga machines were more prone to retain moisture. After the initial trials of 1930, however, the tonga machines reappeared in July of 1933, at which point the companies also decided to bar male workers from the new production process and allow only women to tend the tonga machinery. The benefit of this decision for the firms was twofold. The great majority of the male workers was unionized, and workers’ demands and strikes had caused the tobacco merchants a great deal of trouble in the past. Employing women therefore eliminated the lingering threat of labor unrest; it also cut processing costs in half due to the lower wages that could be paid to female workers. The museum tells this story of technological change and gendered employment practices through displays featuring the actual tonga presses as well as photographs, portraits, and other documents.4

Larger items such as sieves of tobacco leaves, bulky weighing balances, and a mechanical tobacco press—what the president of the museum’s directive board, Ioannis Vyzikas, calls the “magic box”—convey the notion that one production technology superseded another.5 By the 1960s, most of the companies had introduced humidifiers for automatically moistening the tobacco and electric presses for preparing tobacco bales. Functioning examples of these machines only act to reinforce a linear understanding of technological change in the tobacco industry, for visitors cannot help but be impressed with the size and efficiency of these later machines.

The museum could not avoid presenting displays of finished tobacco products as well, including cigarettes and cigars produced in the small tobacco factories of Kavala. A wide variety of smoking paraphernalia—tin and paper tobacco boxes, cigar cutters, knives, and a couple of tools for preparing tobacco for snuffing—is presented in the museum’s showcases. The tour ends with a number of portraits of prominent tobacco merchants displayed close to the exit and next to notable furniture from local tobacco factories.

What sort of audience does the Tobacco Museum attempt to attract? The museum’s director was pretty clear on this point: it is intended to appeal primarily to the adult citizens of Kavala in the hope that the exhibition’s artifacts and photographs will spark their memories, since many of them were tobacco workers in their youth. The museum also strives to attract groups from local schools, aiming to educate children on the importance of preserving historical memory and maintaining local knowledge of tobacco processing. The museum seeks not only to be an exhibition collection, but also to provide an interactive experience for its visitors. In the summer of 2008, for example, it arranged, for the first time, for the on-site production of commercial tobacco samples, hiring experienced tobacco workers to display and teach this largely forgotten method to interested visitors (fig. 5). A yearly writing contest on tobacco and its history aimed at the cit y’s schools also brings local children and their families to the museum and makes it a vivid part of the city’s life.

Fig. 5 Experienced tobacco workers produce commercial samples of tobacco in the museum, an artful skill that has almost been lost, summer 2008. (Reproduced courtesy of the Tobacco Museum of the City of Kavala.)

To a more specialized audience, such as historians of technology, the museum is a treasure. Those with a strong interest in mechanical detail have the chance to see all of the artifacts in use, for in the presence of the museum staff, visitors are welcome to turn on any of the apparatuses on display, even the electric tobacco press and the sieve. Visitors will also find machines and objects displayed here that rarely appear elsewhere—such as in North American museums, for example, due the overwhelmingly negative attitude toward tobacco that prevails there.

One potential group of visitors that might be disappointed, however, are serious researchers. True, the museum does own an impressive collection of archival materials, including 1,100 photographs, 900 books, newspapers, series of tobacco journals published as early as the 1900s (i.e., Revue des Tabacs), the entire archives of the National Tobacco Board, the Tobacco Merchant’s Union of East Macedonia and Thrace, and the Greek Tobacco Exporters Federation, and several archives from local tobacco companies. But none of these collections have been cataloged or digitized, and thus they are difficult for historians and other scholars to access. In addition, the museum’s lack of space and financial support turned this precious material into an object of dispute between the local authorities and other interested parties. Although the museum is scheduled to move into larger quarters at an old warehouse at the center of the city, the move has been delayed for technical and financial reasons.

Rather than dwelling further on the details of its displays and interpretations or on Greek attitudes toward technological history, I wish instead to note in conclusion that my own visit to the museum was a revelation. Both of my parents came from tobacco-farming families, and as a child I witnessed several times what the museum presents as the traditional rural practices of tobacco farming and processing. But I was born and lived in the city for years, and thus, what impressed me the most was the photographic collage of old warehouses—some of which no longer exist—close to the museum’s exit, a collage which serves to remind us of how the city looked only a couple of decades ago. In a world in which sophisticated displays using interactive software techniques and housed in marvelous buildings have become the norm, the Tobacco Museum of Kavala, established and maintained by the personal efforts of many individuals, seems to be a part of the very historical narrative it has put on display.

1. Maria Rentetzi, “Configuring Identities Through Industrial Architecture and Urban Planning: Greek Tobacco Warehouses in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century,” Science Studies 1 (2008): 64–81.

2. See the Tobacco Museum of the City of Kavala’s website, at http://www.tobacco museum.gr (accessed 27 April 2009).

3. Efi Avdela, “The Socialism of ‘Others’: Class Struggle, Clashes between Ethnicities, and Gender Identities in post-Ottoman Thessaloniki,” Ta Istorika 18/19 (1993): 171–204 (in Greek).

4. Since the 1940s, because of World War II and the American tobacco industry’s policy of opening up new markets, Greek tobacco exports have fallen sharply. By 1954, the tobacco workers’ movement had virtually disappeared. Its demise was hastened in 1952 by the repeal of 1933 legislation requiring at least 50 percent of the workforce of tobacco concerns to be male. The mechanization and simplification of processing methods, coupled with moves to relocate the tobacco-processing centers in an effort to curb the interwar trade-union movement, finally led to the abandonment of the warehouses. Today, almost all of Kavala’s tobacco warehouses are empty or have been redeveloped for other purposes. New images of tobacco factories have been displayed in an interesting photographic exhibit by Kamilo Nollas; see the exhibit’s catalog, Tobacco Factories (Athens, 2007). See also Lois Lambrianidis, “The Distribution of the Tobacco Industry and Tobacco Trade in Greece: A Tale of Increased Centralization,” Poli kai Perifereia 7 (1983): 11–40 (in Greek).

5. I would like to thank Ioannis Vyzikas for his warm welcome to the museum and for the two hours’ tour and the long interview he gave me on the morning of Christmas Eve, 2008. Vyzikas has played an instrumental role in collecting artifacts and archival material, establishing and maintaining the museum by investing his time and enthusiasm.

Maria Rentetzi is assistant professor at the National Technical University of Athens in Greece. She teaches the sociology of science and technology, with a special focus on gender. She is the author of Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early Twentieth-Century Vienna (2008).

Copyright© 2009, the Society for the History of Technology

Exterior view of the London Transport Museum. (Source: author photograph, taken with the permission of the London Transport Museum.)

The museum has always been committed to the history of urban transport beyond vehicles. The initial suite of exhibitions sketched the role played by transport in shaping the physical form of, and life in, the metropolis. But this interpretation was not tied in with the vehicles that dominated the displays. A redisplay in 1993–94 gave a much greater emphasis to transport as a factor in urban history. But there was still a tension between the museum’s illustrated narrative of the social, political, and economic history of mobility in London and the displays of trams, buses, and Underground vehicles conveying a rather conventional notion of technological progress.1 By contrast, the present museum, opened in November 2007 after a closure of just over two years, marks a substantial step toward integrating the material remains of London’s public transport with a technocultural history of personal mobility in the city. It also relates that history to debates about how London’s transport might develop in a future dominated by climate change.2

The museum’s legally protected Victorian market building, with its light, airy, cast-iron and glass structure, was both an attraction in its own right and a nightmare for the museum’s exhibition designers and conservationists. Ameliorating some of the worst environmental deficiencies without destroying the amenities was a priority for the refurbishment, swallowing around 80 percent of the project’s £22.5 million ($45 million) cost. A rationalization of the museum’s ancillary services, with the entrance, shop, café, and a new 100-seat lecture theater now located in an annex, leaves the main hall with two upper levels free for displays and a small library, open to both browsers and scholars. The result is a much-needed additional gallery, easier circulation, and splendid views of both the full height of the Victorian structure and, from the upper galleries, an impressive selection of road vehicles on the ground floor.

The success of any exhibition needs to be judged partly against its target audiences, in this case visitors who do not have a historical knowledge of either London or its transport. The old museum was good at attracting family groups, with well over half of the annual visitation just before closure (200,000) falling into this category, split roughly equally between the sexes. The new displays seek to retain these audiences while also reaching out to a new demographic—people, particularly those in their twenties and thirties, who are interested in art and design. Here London Transport’s long and well-deserved reputation as a world leader in industrial and graphic design offers considerable opportunities to build on the tentative start the old museum had made in this direction.3 On the other hand, those with a strong interest in technical details will be disappointed that the museum does not provide these as part of its main displays; research suggested a low demand, and such information is available chiefly in the library. By contrast, children are seen as a key audience, and considerable thought has gone into making exhibits accessible to them throughout by tailoring interpretative content and presenting it at appropriate heights (fig. 2). But this is equally a museum for adults, albeit not one aimed in its main galleries primarily at the specialist or the scholar.

The new forms of interpretation at the London Transport Museum appeal to children.(Source: author photograph, taken with the permission of the London Transport Museum.)

The museum presents London as a metropolis whose world-class status over the last two centuries owes much to its transport systems, public and private. This aim reflects the priorities of the new body, Transport for London, which took over London Transport, and hence the museum, in 2000, providing around £9 million of the funding. Although the museum now treats all of London’s passenger transport since roughly 1800, public transport still dominates visually. There are fewer (twenty-five) vehicles on display than before, although the total number of objects is up from some four hundred to more than a thousand. While vehicles can all too easily overwhelm other aspects of exhibitions, they remain powerful attractors for many visitors, especially when it is possible to board the interiors in a controlled manner as is the case with many here. Inevitably, given the different stories that can be told with a particular vehicle, there are hard choices to be made over which to exclude, and old favorites now gone can usually be found in the museum’s warehouse at Acton in the far-western suburbs. This is open to the public on a handful of occasions each year.

How well does the museum shape up to its mission to interpret London’s transport as a vital aspect of everyday life, historically, now, and in the future? Pretty well in general, although inevitably some elements work better than others.

The visit is a semi-directed one. Once past the turnstile—the fairly substantial entrance charge is partly there to control demand—visitors go up to the highest gallery and then work their way down to the ground level, ideally through both upper galleries, although it is possible to cut out the one on the middle floor. The narrative interpretation in the first of these upper spaces is nicely done, the gallery’s linearity lending itself to a chronological treatment of transport’s influence on London’s growth during the nineteenth century. Four themes are treated (literally) in parallel: the River Thames as both a facilitator of and barrier to mobility, the growth and impact of London’s suburban railway network, the place of street transport, and an overview of the city’s changing morphology. It is easy enough physically to weave between these narratives, which are told through the range of visual, tactile, and aural media one expects these days, and to make connections between them. I have no serious quibble with any of the interpretations, given the constraints of space and the intended audiences. Technological alternatives are given some notice, serious efforts are made to contextualize technological change in social and economic terms, and generally speaking the interpretation avoids any implication that, important though it was, transport was singlehandedly responsible for London’s development.

The world’s first Underground continues to appeal to a wide audience. (Source: author photograph, taken with the permission of the London Transport Museum.)

There is the old challenge of most visitors gravitating to the vehicles, which here are horse-drawn buses and trams (plus a sedan chair right at the start) arranged chronologically, and ignoring much of what else is on offer. Whether visitors come away with anything other than a vague idea that one technology supersedes another remains to be discovered, but the freedom to pick and choose is at the heart of all museum visiting and informal learning. In any case this emphasis on the horse, a topic only quite recently taken seriously by historians of urban mobility, is very welcome. And there is much I liked about the way the individual vehicles are treated, not least the fact that they are now fully integrated into the overarching story. Associated with each is a panel narrating a snippet of the life story of an individual, usually a worker, associated with the vehicle; a ghostly photograph of the person helps to convey an impression of times past that is conspicuously denied by the patina of the restored vehicles. Touch-sensitive labels offer a choice of information for each vehicle, addressing the design and development of its type, the service of that particular example, and the kinds of journeys for which it was used. Words, photos, and occasionally film all have a role here, sometimes intriguing in the possibilities they suggest for academic research.

Mannequins suggest the long service life of Underground trains. (Source: author photograph, taken with the permission of the London Transport Museum.)

The next gallery down, also linear, focuses on the Underground and the spread of London’s suburbs, with a small selection of locomotives, steam and electric, complemented by passenger accommodation (figs. 3 and 4). Essentially the same mix of multimedia interpretation and vehicular access is used here, and again there is little to argue with in terms of historiographical perspective. Very occasionally a hint of technological determinism creeps into the graphic panels (“Public transport creates suburbs”), but equally the attentive visitor will note the suggestions that the expansion of mobility and the provision of transport infrastructure and services were coconstructed. Some neat touches bring vehicles to life and emphasize the longevity of railway equipment. Inside the famous 1938 Underground cars, for example, the alert visitor will notice that the fashions of the “passengers” boarding and alighting the train in a life-size film projected on the end wall change as the decades roll by—it was 1988 before the last of these cars disappeared (fig. 4). And the gendered nature of mobility, a notable absence in the old displays, now receives some mention, as, for example, with the “ladies only” compartment of the Metropolitan Railway coach occupied by two women “off to town.”

By the time they reach ground level visitors have thus had the opportunity to think about London’s transport from several perspectives and through a variety of media. Now they are faced with a mix of further historically orientated spaces, with no clear path through them until they head for the exit and some exhibits about the future. However, the theme of each part of the ground floor is signaled clearly enough once one reaches it. In addition to single examples of an electric tram and trolleybus there are several motor buses, including the iconic red Routemaster double-decker, withdrawn from ordinary service in 2005 after nearly fifty years (fig. 5). There are also further exhibits relating to the Underground, including welcome displays on the hidden technologies of tunneling techniques and the escalator, an American invention transforming access to the deep-level “Tube” stations from 1911. There are also taxis, motorized successors to the personalized mobility afforded by the sedan chair displayed upstairs, and a bicycle—a much-needed, if understated, reminder that technological mobility is not just about mechanical power.

Key vehicles tell the story of changing street transportation. (Source: author photograph, taken with the permission of the London Transport Museum.)

Because they are physically discrete, it is easier to locate the galleries dedicated to London Transport’s contribution to industrial and graphic design from the 1930s and to the experience of the system in both world wars. The former is particularly striking, with a continuous large-scale projection of key posters and other design features, including the Underground map, making the point that the automobile was not the only kind of mobility to benefit from sophisticated cultural work.

All this is nicely done, and although I might quibble here and there about the detail of interpretation, there is much to engage the historian of technology as well as the more casual visitor. The one clear disappointment was toward the exit, where the present and future of London’s transport come under the spotlight. The principle is excellent—encouraging visitors to think about future possibilities in the light of the past. At the display’s core is the imperative of addressing climate change, requiring hard thinking about how much and what kind of urban mobility we can afford. Public transport is presented as a key to both sustainable mobility and urban regeneration. The overall tone is perhaps a little too didactic to be truly engaging, but there are opportunities to reflect on different scenarios for the future, depending on how strictly and by what means carbon emissions are controlled. Technological possibilities are given some emphasis, but rather too much space is given over to exhibits mounted by various of the museum’s commercial sponsors. They are marked as such, and to a media-savvy generation perhaps it is no great hardship to interpret their content in this light. But while I acknowledge the need for commercial money, I feel that this level of influence over content is unacceptable in any museum, not least because it radically diminishes exhibitors’ freedom to treat topics from a disinterested perspective. For example, the advertisement—for this is all it amounts to—for “The pursuit of the ultimate eco-car” by a well-known manufacturer does not address the concern that hybrid drives might, under some full-life cycles, cost more in carbon terms than a conventional auto. However, this whole section has a limited life; it will be interesting to see how it is replaced.

There is a very great deal that is excellent or good about the new London Transport Museum, keeping it in the first rank of transport museums around the globe. The new displays do a good job in broadening the historical remit, comprehending transport as an important factor in the social and spatial development of this world city. Vehicles remain the stars of the show, as they always will be, but they are much better integrated into the overall stories than in the museum’s previous incarnations. The interpretation nicely contextualizes the vehicles as both places of work and spaces of consumption, and there is much to delight specialist and lay visitor alike about the wider history of mobility in London.

1. Colin Divall, “Changing Routes? The New London Transport Museum,” Technology and Culture 36 (1995): 630–35.

2. London Transport Museum website: (accessed 16 May 2008).

3. One result is a most welcome addition to the new website—a searchable collection of over 5,000 advertising posters and 700 pieces of original poster artwork. Equally invaluable to the historian as well as the casual viewer is a selection of some 15,000 black-and-white photographs (roughly 10 percent of the collection), some dating from the 1860s. See and (both accessed 16 May 2008).

Colin Divall is head of the Institute of Railway Studies and Transport History, a joint initiative of the National Railway Museum and the University of York, UK. He is the author, with Andrew Scott, of Making Histories in Transport Museums (London and New York, 2001). He thanks Oliver Green, head curator at the London Transport Museum, for arranging his visit and discussing the project’s background, philosophy, and challenges. The views expressed here are the author’s alone.

Copyright© 2008, the Society for the History of Technology

On the occasion of the Society for the History of Technology’s 2008 meeting in Lisbon, what follows is an abbreviated tour of the major scientific and technological museums of the area and a brief glimpse at their rich and varied collections. This review proceeds thematically, beginning with the more broadly chartered institutions of the region and continuing with the more specialized museums that focus on particular industries or particular sectors: transportation, communications, natural resources, and energy. Our hope is that this brief review will serve as a useful guide for those who choose to venture forth from the annual meeting itself and experience Lisbon’s vibrant museum scene.

Museu da ciência (Science Museum) and Museu de história natural (Natural History Museum)

The Museums of Science and Natural History are located in the former Lisbon Polytechnic School. The Science Museum was created in 1985 and is largely devoted to the public understanding of science.1 Many of its long- and short-term exhibitions and workshops are aimed at a younger audience. At the core of the permanent collection are more than 10,000 scientific apparatuses, most dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The permanent display presents both a historical approach (instruments used in the past) and an interactive experience that allows visitors to be part of the various experiments. The highlight of the Science Museum is the nineteenth-century Laboratorio Chimico (Chemistry Laboratory), which was considered one of the best laboratories of its time.2 Recently restored to its original plan and with its old instruments and apparatuses in place, the unique setting of the Chemistry Laboratory now offers visitors a glimpse of how chemistry was studied and taught in the nineteenth century (fig. 1).

The museum also has a planetarium, used mainly for pedagogical purposes. Its small astronomical observatory on the terrace, which dates to 1898, is used for public courses in astronomy. It has not yet been restored.

The Natural History Museum has three primary collections: botany, zoology, and mineralogy and geology.3 The museum was part of the pedagogical strategy of the Lisbon Polytechnic School, which promoted an experiment-driven approach to science. In this context, the school created both the mineralogical and geological collections (1840) and the Botanical Garden (1873) that is the highlight of the museum. The Botanical Garden was considered crucial to the training of students enrolled at the Polytechnic. The first plants and trees were brought from the botanical garden at Ajuda in 1873. Later plantings were purchased from European botanical gardens and supplemented with specimens from the Portuguese colonies in South America, Africa, and Asia.

Fig. 1 The Laboratorio Chimico (Chemistry Laboratory) at the Museum of Science, University of Lisbon. (Photo by P. Cintra, reproduced courtesy of the Museum of Science.)

Museu da farmácia (Pharmacy Museum)

Founded in 1996 and located in a former palace, the Pharmacy Museum covers more than 5,000 years of pharmaceutical history, from prehistoric medicines to medieval potions, and artifacts from 3600 BCE to pharmaceutical techniques developed for voyages to outer space.4 Objects related to the pharmaceutical art and science of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, Japan, Africa, Europe, and South America are on display. The highlight of the museum lies in the four pharmacies brought intact from other parts of Portugal and the Portuguese empire; these include a nineteenth-century Chinese drugstore from Portugal’s former territory of Macao.

Museu do azulejo (Tile Museum)

The Tile Museum is located in the sixteenth-century Madre de Deus convent and cloister.5 Created in 1980, the museum features the tile exhibition that opened at the King João III cloister in 1971 as part of the National Museum of Ancient Art. Portuguese tiles from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century are on permanent display, organized chronologically in fifteen rooms. These exhibitions range from early manufacturing techniques (Room 1) to designs by contemporary artists (Room 15). Rooms A to H, original to the convent, are richly decorated with paintings, tile panels, and gilded wood in the mannerist and baroque styles (fig. 2). Room H features the Panorama of Lisbon, a tilework showing Lisbon as it appeared prior to the earthquake of 1755. In addition to the permanent collection, the museum organizes temporary exhibitions on the history of tiles and ceramics.

A fine example in situ of Portuguese tilework is found in the Marquis of Fronteira Palace, where eighteenth-century tiles cover every surface, their scale varying from tiny panels to entire walls, their color from polychrome to blue and white, their nationality from Portuguese to Spanish and Dutch, and their themes from the erudite to the satirical.6

Fig. 2 Altar tiles, Lisbon, about 1650, on display at the Museu do Azulejo (Tile Museum). (Photo courtesy of the Tile Museum.)

Museu da marinha (Maritime Museum)

The Maritime Museum is located in the northern and western wings of the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, the well-known monastery conceived and commissioned by Manuel I as a symbol of the Portuguese royal dynasty and a tribute to the Portuguese oceanic explorations to Africa, South America, India, China, and Japan.7 The monks of the religious order of Saint Jerome were charged with praying for the king’s soul and providing spiritual comfort to those leaving for unknown and distant lands. The monastery is considered the masterpiece of Manuelino, the Portuguese architectural style that combines elements of the late Gothic and Renaissance periods with an iconography related to the king, Christianity, and the natural world.

The Maritime Museum collection was planned in 1863 by King Luís, himself commander of a ship of the royal fleet. The museum illustrates the importance of the Portuguese seafaring tradition with maps, maritime codes, navigational equipment, full-size and model ships, uniforms, and weapons. Galeotas (the richly decorated rowboats used by the royal family in their promenades along the banks of the Tagus River) are displayed in the adjacent freestanding gallery. The particularly interesting Room 5 is dedicated to the eighteenth-century shipbuilding industry of the Lisbon Arsenal.

Museu militar (Military Museum)

This museum is located in a neighborhood long related to the Lisbon Arsenal.8 Beginning in the fifteenth century, weapons, explosives, and gunpowder were made and stored in the tercenas, along the bank of the Tagus. The museum building dates to the eighteenth century, when the Marquis of Pombal rebuilt the former headquarters of the Tenência (the government office in charge of making and storing weapons and other war matériel), which was damaged in the 1755 earthquake. The eastern courtyard (Pátio dos Canhões) was part of this building. In 1842, the chief inspector of the Arsenal was attracted by the “old and bizarre machines” and other apparatuses forgotten in the cellars of several of the Arsenal buildings. The Artillery Museum was founded nine years later (1851), but it did not open to the public until 1877.

The building was remodeled and enlarged at the end of the nineteenth century. Some of the principal artists of the time were invited to contribute works of art. The Corinthian-style portal authored by a renowned Portuguese sculptor dates from this period.

The Military Museum displays weapons, uniforms, and armor, as well as war-themed paintings, sculpture, and tiles. Three of its five rooms contain war artifacts from the fifteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries. The Camões room is devoted to paintings that show the primary episodes from the Portuguese epic, Os Lus’adas. The basement level is devoted to the Mouzinho de Albuquerque, an influential military leader in the Portuguese African empire.

Museu dos coches (Coach Museum)

The National Coach Museum is located on the premises of the old Royal Riding Arena of Belém Palace,9 designed by Italian architect Giacomo Azzolini for King João VI. The upper part of the main hall (50 m by 17 m) contains platforms used by the royal family and members of the court to watch equestrian games. The arena became a museum in 1904; the exhibition area was enlarged in 1940.

The collection features ceremonial vehicles from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, most of which belonged to the crown or were the private property of the Portuguese royal house. It includes coaches, Berlins, carriages, chaises, cabriolets, litters, sedan chairs, and children’s buggies. The excellent collection enables visitors to understand the technical and artistic evolution of the animal-drawn carriages used by European courts before the advent of the motorcar.

Particularly impressive are three Triumphal Vehicles that King João V sent to the Pope in 1716 to demonstrate his wealth; the richly gilded Lisbon Coronation Coach in the baroque style that symbolizes Lisbon as capital of the Portuguese empire and victorious in the defense of the Christian faith; the Ambassador Coach, which features stone and wood sculpture carved with the symbols of navigation and glorifies the Portuguese king (depicted as the Lord of Navigation); and, finally, the Oceans Coach, a tribute to the Portuguese empire that extended from Brazil to India.

Museu da carris (Museum Of Public Transportation)

The Carris Museum, created in 1999, is dedicated to the Lisbon transport system.10 The collection is housed in two locations, linked by a short ride in a 1901 tram. Most of Area 1 displays documents, pictures, and small-scale artifacts related to the history of the transport company; Area 2 exhibits Lisbon trams and buses, both horse-drawn and modern. The museum features the typical yellow trolleys of Lisbon and the green double-decker buses that first operated during the Mundo Português (the Portuguese World Exhibition) that took place under the dictatorship.

Museu das comunicações (Communications Museum)

The Communications Museum, created in 1999, is located in Alcântara, an industrial area in nineteenth-century Lisbon.11 It is dedicated to several forms of communication: stagecoach mail services, postal services, stamps, television, radio, telecommunications, and air navigation. It also includes the House of the Future where contemporary technologies are presented in a domestic environment to show how they can enhance daily life. The museum is strongly committed to an educational program for children.

In addition to multiple temporary exhibitions, the museum features Shortening Distances, a permanent display of the history of Portuguese postal and telecommunication systems. The permanent exhibition is organized around four main themes: the telephone network, which presents old telephones and automatic exchange stations; a typical nineteenth-century postal station, which contains commonly used artifacts and furnishings; stagecoach mail services, which revisits early Portuguese postal services; and the House of the Future, where the latest developments in home automation (domotics) are presented and experienced.

Museu da água (Water Museum)

This museum dates from 1919, when the water company decided to show the public some of the artifacts used in the Lisbon water supply network. The museum was remodeled in 1987, and in 1990 it earned the Council of Europe Museum Prize.

The Water Museum consists of four different sites that formed the core of the Lisbon water supply network, itself some 60 km long (the distance between Lisbon and the water source on its outskirts is approximately 18 km). The sites are: the Barbadinhos Steam Pump Station (1880–1928); two storage reservoirs (Mãe d’Água, 1746, and Patriarcal, 1856–1940s); and the Águas Livres Aqueduct (1732, 1834–1960s).12 The well-preserved Barbadinhos Steam Pump Station is particularly interesting from a technological point of view; built in 1880, it used four steam machines and five boilers to increase the volume of water distributed. The two reservoirs were constructed to receive and distribute water collected by the aqueduct. Today they are used for art exhibits and other cultural displays, but it is still possible to view the vast holding tanks, the internal waterfall at Mãe d’Água, and the related equipment (fig. 3).

The aqueduct itself was planned by Manuel da Maia under King João V and took one hundred years to complete. It is a remarkable example of architectural engineering, not only for its length (it extends 941 m across the Alcantâra Valley) but also for the heights of its thirty-five arches, among which is a pointed arch 65.29 m high by 28.86 m wide, the world’s largest pointed arch built of stone.

Museu da electricidade (Electricity Museum)

The Electricity Museum is located in the Tagus Power Station (Central Tejo), a Lisbon architectural landmark with a facade of red brick, iron, and glass.13 The plant dates to 1908, when a small power station was built to supply Lisbon with electricity and to power gaslights. The plant was enlarged in 1919 when two generators and six low-pressure boilers were installed.

Fig. 3 The Machinery Room at the Barbadinhos Steam Pump Station, at the Museu da Água (Water Museum). (Photo courtesy of the Water Museum.)

The Central Tejo was fully operational until 1954, when both its space and technological equipment were altered to accommodate new technical demands and productivity growth. The plant closed in 1975 and reopened in 1991 as the Electricity Museum. In 2006, the permanent exhibition was enriched with rooms devoted to the history of energy; they highlight the role of future renewable energy sources and allow youngsters to experience electrical phenomena.

The main part of the permanent exhibition is the old power station, which still contains all its generating equipment (a high-pressure boiler made by the Babcock & Wilcox Company of Britain) and groups of turbo-alternators.

It is worth remarking that the primary fuel used to run the plant was the coal unloaded and carried in baskets to the power station by workers from Alcochete, a small village on the opposite bank of the river.14

The Science Museum’s Laboratorio Chimico is unique and highly regarded within the European museum community, and the Water Museum has received several European prizes. On balance, however, Portuguese museums are typically less well-known and recognized than their counterparts elsewhere. Nevertheless, they do offer stimulating perspectives on the scientific, technological, and industrial history of Portugal, and they are more than worth a visit.15

1. <http://www.mc.ul.pt> (accessed 25 March 2008), partially available in English. All museums discussed here are easily reached by public transportation. Local organizers are available to help SHOT conferees arrange visits.

2. Visits can be arranged online at <http://www.mc.ul.pt/lab/> (accessed 25 March 2008). During the SHOT 2008 meeting, Tour E will visit the Chemistry Laboratory and Botanical Garden as part of the Lisbon technological walking tour.

3. <http://www.jb.ul.pt/> (accessed 25 March 2008; no English version available).

4. <http://www.anf.pt/site/index.php?page=data/anf/museu_farmacia.php> (accessed 25 March 2008; no English version available).

5. <http://www.mnazulejo-ipmuseus.pt> (accessed 25 March 2008).

6. During the SHOT 2008 meeting, Tour D will visit the Marquis of Fronteira Palace.

7. <http://museu.marinha.pt> (accessed 25 March 2008; no English version available).

8. <http://www.geira.pt/mmilitar/> (accessed 15 April 2008).

9. <http://www.museudoscoches-ipmuseus.pt/> (accessed 25 March 2008).

10. <http://www.carris.pt/en/index.php?area=empresa_historia> (accessed 25 March 2008).

11. <http://www.fpc.pt/> (accessed 25 March 2008; an English version of this page is currently under construction). During SHOT 2008, Tour E will visit the surroundings of the museum.

12. <http://museudaagua.epal.pt/museudaagua/> (accessed 25 March 2008). During SHOT 2008, Tour B will visit part of the aqueduct and the Mãe d’Água reservoir.

13. <http://www.edp.pt/EDPI/Internet/EN/Group/AboutEDP/EDPFoundation/EDP ElectricityMuseum/default.htm> (accessed 25 March 2008).

14. The SHOT 2008 banquet will be located in Alcochete; Central Tejo is visible from the restaurant.

15. Admission to most of the museums covered in this essay will be free to SHOT members during the Lisbon meeting; simply show your conference badge at the door.

Maria Paula Diogo is assistant professor of history of technology in the Faculty of Science and Technology at New University of Lisbon, Portugal, and coordinates a project on technology and the Portuguese empire. Her current research focuses on Portuguese engineering. She publishes on a regular basis both nationally and internationally and is a member of several international research networks and groups. She chairs the SHOT 2008 local arrangements committee.

©2008 by the Society for the History of Technology.

I first visited the ship’s museum ten years ago and have been back many times since. The quality of its presentation has improved steadily over the years, but I have always felt that it had yet to realize its full potential. Happily, this is no longer the case: after thirty-six years of continuous refinement, the SS Great Britain Museum now offers an experience that is quite extraordinary. This is due in part to the ship’s imaginative new setting, completed in 2005, which cleverly encloses its climate-controlled dry dock beneath a thin layer of water and glass. The visual impact of this new arrangement is stunning, for the ship appears to be floating on water, with its stern towering above the waterline in all its restored glory.

Visitors can walk around part of this new dock when they enter the museum, but they cannot access the ship from this point. Instead, they are ushered into a new exhibition gallery located in one of the historic buildings that flank the ship. Once inside, a multitude of displays on several floors tells the story of the ship, providing visitors with an understanding of the historical context of the SS Great Britain before they reach the main attraction, the ship itself (this approach echoes that of the Mary Rose in Portsmouth). The exhibition building is long and narrow, and the main route through it is via a ramp that runs along the length of the space and gradually rises to the second floor, where the entrance to the ship is. There is also an elevator, which helps to ensure that this second-floor entrance is accessible to all visitors.

Fig. 1 So how do you get fresh milk on a voyage across the Atlantic? The cow on the deck of the SS Great Britain. (Courtesy of R. Gwynne.)

Within the exhibition building, the story of the ship begins with its service on the Falkland Islands, its salvage, and its long journey back to Bristol, illustrated with original footage from a television documentary projected onto a large screen. I found this to be one of the most interesting aspects of the ship’s history, and the fact that the SS Great Britain survived for so long as a coal hulk makes its restoration story even more impressive. However, this part of the display is located close to the building’s entrance, and at the time of my visit the crowds of people entering the gallery made it difficult to watch the film. Judging by the popularity of this part of the exhibit, its placement should be reconsidered.

The remainder of the indoor exhibition consists of traditional graphic and text panels displayed along the length of the ramp. These panels focus on the key stages of the ship’s history, from luxury Atlantic liner to emigrant clipper, troop ship to windjammer, and finally to its days as a coal hulk. During the ship’s first couple of years of service she crossed the Atlantic several times until she ran aground on the sands of Dundrum Bay in Northern Ireland. Having suffered little damage to her hull, the ship was eventually refloated and, in 1852, was fitted with a new 500-horsepower Penn engine, a 300-foot-long deck, and new passenger accommodations. From 1852 to 1876 the ship served as an emigrant clipper and frequently traveled to Australia, South Africa, and New York. During the Crimean War, in 1855, she was chartered by the British government and became a troop ship. Then, in 1882, the vessel was converted into a fast three-masted sailing ship, and in this guise she became a cargo-hauling windjammer. In 1886, she was damaged rounding the Cape and forced to put to shelter in the Falkland Islands. The cost of repairs was deemed too great so she was eventually sold as a storage hulk in Port Stanley. After several decades the ship ceased to be watertight and was therefore towed a short distance from Port Stanley, skippered in shallow water, and abandoned to the elements. In 1970, the ship was finally refloated as part of a dynamic salvage attempt and returned to Bristol on a barge.

Fig. 2 One of the scenes illustrating life onboard the SS Great Britain. (Courtesy of R. Gwynne.)

The panels along the ramp are lively and to the point, successfully presenting key aspects of the ship’s story to a broad audience of nonspecialists. Complementing the panels’ interpretive text are an array of original objects that illustrate the ship’s many voyages and, more importantly, the experiences of some of the people who lived and traveled on it. The overall pace of the indoor exhibition is good, although the flow of visitors moving up the ramp can make it difficult to dwell in one place to study a particular display.

There are also a number of large interactive mechanical displays within the exhibition building. The most imposing of these demonstrates how the ship’s propeller could be disengaged from the driveshaft and lifted out of the water. The instructions are confusing, but in the end a joint effort with several other visitors enabled me to complete the sequence of lifting the propeller and re-engaging it. Other interactive elements are geared toward a younger audience. These include a dressing-up box, which contains a number of reproduction costume items for visitors to try on, as well as a facsimile of the ship’s wheel, where one can pretend to steer the ship on a westerly course. The building also houses a display of some of the ship’s REVIEW original masts and hull plates, which are arrayed along the walls or suspended from above. The panels that accompany these original parts use them both to explain the archaeology of the ship and to remind visitors of its condition when it arrived in Bristol in 1970.

At the top of the ramp visitors board the ship itself. A choice of audio guides is available at this point, each of which enables guests to tour the ship from one of four distinctive points of view: that of first-class passengers on their way to Australia; that of third-class passengers making the same journey; that of the ship’s cat (an audio guide to the ship for children); and, finally, that of a maritime expert who takes visitors on a technical tour. But I decided to go it alone and began my tour on the ship’s main deck. Vast and uncluttered, the deck of the SS Great Britain is a perfect place to take in views of Bristol’s famous waterfront. As I strolled along the deck, however, I was surprised to hear the faint sound of a mooing cow. Curious, I traced its source to one of the deckhouses, where I was presented with a display featuring a full-size model of the ship’s cow. A simple but effective trigger causes the cow to moo each time someone walks past (during my visit, this was popular with children and adults alike). Next to the display, an interpretive panel clearly explains the need for and supply of fresh milk on a four-month journey (fig. 1).

FIG. 3 A view of the ship’s corroded hull from beneath the glass canopy. (Courtesy of R. Gwynne.)

From the deck, visitors enter the ship at one of two points and are then free to wander around its cabins, all of which have been restored to show what they would have looked like when the ship was in her prime. Although the cabins’ furnishings are clearly new, they effectively convey a sense of what conditions would have been like during a voyage—depending on the passenger or crew member’s status, of course. Indeed, the marked difference between the experiences of first- and third-class passengers is dramatically illustrated within the cabins by way of tableau scenes complete with full-sized figures, sounds, and even smells. Some of these scenes convey the less savory realities of a long journey, such as sea sickness, the presence of rats, and the difficulties associated with giving birth onboard (fig. 2); others use humor to make a point, such as that which aurally depicts a passenger rudely occupying one of the latrines.{2}

One of the most dramatic features of the restored ship is a replica of the engine used to drive its propeller. The original engine was an enormous 1,000-horsepower, cross-wise, double-diagonal, two-crank machine with two cylinders. The replica of this engine occupies a space inside the ship three stories high. Its designers have cleverly reproduced the form and bulk of the original engine without replicating its weight, and because the engine rotates, it helps to convey a sense of the scale and power of the original.
Toward the front of the ship, visitors are led along a mezzanine walkway into a part of the ship that is totally unrestored and without decks. This stands in marked contrast to the way the rest of the ship is presented, and it dramatically illustrates the sheer size of the hull, its volume, and, most importantly, its construction. This enables visitors to more fully appreciate not only what the ship was like before its decks were restored, but also the extent to which its hull is now corroded.

FIG. 4 A typical interpretive panel explaining the long-term challenge of preserving the hull of the ship. (Courtesy of R. Gwynne.)

After I explored the interior of the ship I went through a portal that led me down inside its dry dock and under its hull. This is truly a magical space—and warm, too, for the canopy of rippling water and glass panels that encloses the dock seems to produce a greenhouse effect (fig. 3). On closer inspection, I found that the higher temperature was actually the work of the dry dock’s climate-control plant. Housed in a large container along one of the dock’s walls and fully explained in a series of panels, this system also reduces the chamber’s humidity to prevent further corrosion of the hull (fig. 4). In addition, double doors at the entrance serve as an airlock to help maintain the dock’s environment. By enclosing the ship’s dry dock in this dramatic fashion, the museum has hit upon a truly elegant solution to a complex set of problems: from below, the canopy of water and glass protects the hull of the ship from further corrosion, and from above, it makes for a dramatic presentation of the ship as a whole.

It is easy to see why the new SS Great Britain Museum won the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries in 2006, as well as the European Museum Foundation’s Micheletti Prize in 2007. The secret of its success rests in the way it combines a fabulous artifact with an engaging narrative through sensitive and simple interpretations that foster an understanding of why the ship is important and what life onboard was like. What most impressed me about the museum was how it managed to create something new and engaging with relatively simple, tried-and-true display techniques. In a world in which sophisticated mechanical and software-based interactive displays are fast becoming the norm in museums across the United Kingdom, the SS Great Britain Museum stands as a refreshing alternative. In this case, less is definitely more.

Stephen Richards is head of Creative Development at the National Railway Museum in York.

Copyright© 2008, the Society for the History of Technology

Robert Moses and the Modern City already appears to be touching off one of the most spirited historical debates since the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit of 1995. It may be that the greatest legacy that Moses will leave in New York City is not the eponymous edifice he so badly wanted, but his name itself and the image of his scowling visage—the very personification of the benefits, the pain, the almost incalculable windfalls and wipeouts, and above all the clash of contending forces that make up the process of urban redevelopment in a city that is itself a cultural icon.

Born into affluence, Moses received degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Columbia but then languished for a decade as a midlevel bureaucrat until he was taken under the wing of New York Governor Al Smith, who appointed him head of the Long Island State Parks Authority in 1924. He soon perfected the art of using of the autonomous, quasi-public agency to centralize control and limit public and legislative scrutiny. In 1934 he added the New York City Parks Commission and the Triborough Bridge Authority to his portfolio, and continued on that aggrandizing path until at one point he simultaneously held twelve separate state, city, and regional offices. As Hilary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson observe in the introduction to Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, the catalog mentioned earlier, “Moses’s public works . . . are so indispensable it is impossible to imagine New York without them.”{1} In 1929 he built Jones Beach on Long Island and two parkways to connect it to the light- and air-starved masses of Gotham. He was directly responsible for the construction of the Triborough Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the Marine Bridge, the Throgs Neck Bridge, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the Northern State Parkway, the Southern State Parkway, the Long Island Expressway, the Cross-Island Parkway, Orchard Beach, Jacob Riis Beach, New Rockaway Beach, Bethpage State Park, Sunken Meadows State Park, Marine Park, Pelham Bay Park, five hundred playgrounds, seventeen swimming pools, and the 1964 Worlds Fair. He played a major role in the development of Lincoln Center, the United Nations complex, Shea Stadium, and a dozen major housing projects. He assembled and cleared land for the Manhattan campuses of Fordham, New York University, and the Julliard School, and in Brooklyn for the Pratt Institute and Long Island University.

Fig. 1 McCarren Pool, Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (Photo copyright Andrew Moore, reproduced with permission.)

In a paper read on the first day of the symposium, the urban historian Robert Fishman argued that the beginning of the end for Moses came in 1952, with his plan to extend Fifth Avenue south under the Washington Square arch, across the park, and on downtown as a broad new urban arterial.{2} Residents objected, only to be denounced as malcontents, radicals, and subversives. The “Battle of Washington Square” lasted until 1958, when the city killed the project and closed the park to traffic. The conflict galvanized one of the locals, a minor figure identified in news accounts as Mrs. James Jacobs; three years later her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities would set the consensus view of cities and planning, embodied by Moses and his great public works, on its head. Moses did successfully build his most notorious project, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, in the 1950s and early 1960s, but two even more ambitious schemes, the Mid-Manhattan and Lower Manhattan Expressways, were never started. In 1968 Governor Nelson Rockefeller removed Moses from his last remaining post, as director of the Triborough Bridge Authority, and he withdrew into a resentful retirement made even more bitter by Caro’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book. He made an effort to counter his declining fortunes in a 1970 autobiography titled Public Works: A Dangerous Trade, but the book was as dry and detached as the man himself and sold poorly. He died in 1981, leaving an estate worth less than fifty thousand dollars.

The symposium, organized by Columbia professors Hilary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson, was as much a reappraisal of Caro’s biography as an assessment of Moses’ forty-year career. A constant refrain was that while Moses was indeed a powerful figure and an astoundingly abrasive individual, he was less omnipotent and omniscient than Caro asserted, more a highly talented and astute administrator finely tuned to the shifting winds of financial opportunity. The Long Island parks and parkways of the 1920s used land stockpiled decades before for water reserves and made obsolete by newer aqueducts. The roads and playgrounds of the 1930s were built with Works Progress Administration dollars—in 1936 New York received one out of every seven WPA dollars spent nationwide—and in the 1950s his great expressways were paid for with federal highway funds allocated on a 90/10 matching basis. The feds had money and needed projects to spend it on. Moses provided the projects—the plans, the surveys, the blueprints, the local government approvals, the seed money, all the things Washington was prohibited by law from supplying, but that other cities couldn’t seem to cough up.

Fig. 2 Betsy Head Pool, Brownsville, Brooklyn. (Photo copyright Andrew Moore, reproduced with permission.)

Of the three interlocking exhibits, Remaking the Metropolis, at the Museum of the City of New York, was the most successful.{3} Confined to a restricted gallery space, the exhibit still thought big, tipping visitors back on their heels with artifacts of Moses’s most spectacular successes and most colossal defeats. Its centerpiece was a thirty-foot long model of a road that never was: the Mid-Manhattan Expressway, slashing across town at a fourth-floor height from the Hudson to the East River at Thirtieth Street. An only slightly smaller model of the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge dominated the exhibit’s entry. That idea was killed by Moses’ nemesis Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 in favor of the current tunnel. These models and others were clearly the stars of the show, and it is ironic that nearly all illustrated abandoned projects. (Most had also been in badly deteriorated condition and needed extensive restoration; the preservation of these invaluable relics itself might have adequately justified the exhibits.)

Moses’s completed projects were represented through various wall hangings, including period photographs and documents and a series of new photos taken by Andrew Moore on commission for the exhibits; Moore’s photos are reproduced in the exhibit catalog as well. One noteworthy set in particular, a series of day and night scenes of the infamous Cross-Bronx Expressway, lends support to the contention of the symposium’s most astringent participant, SUNY-Buffalo’s Ray Bromley, that Caro’s extended story of the impact of the Cross-Bronx on the East Tremont neighborhood was selective and distorted. Caro describes an almost postapocalyptic scene, but East Tremont housing was already receiving the lowest possible rating from the federal Home Owner’s Loan Corporation before the highway started, and the neighborhood experienced a cycle of distress and revival in the forty years after construction comparable to others in the South Bronx much farther from the highway. Far from a Moses creation, the Cross-Bronx was first laid out in the 1929 Regional Plan for New York, and “from 1931 [when it was opened] on the George Washington Bridge was like an enormous cannon pointed at the mid-Bronx.” Had Moses not happened, Bromley concluded, the fate of both the expressway and the South Bronx neighborhoods would have been largely the same.

In some ways the Road to Recreation, at the Queens Museum of Art, was the most disappointing of the exhibits. Where the City Museum was cramped for space, Queens had room to spare, yet used it to little advantage. Everything, save for two small video monitors and one model, was hung on the walls. The numerous small photographs of small playgrounds were swallowed up by the huge expanses of wall. The only model, of the unbuilt Long Island Sound Bridge from Oyster Bay to Rye, was shunted off to a dim gallery that otherwise contained only a rather small and desultory display of roads and bridges out of sync with the show’s bright emphasis on beaches, pools, and playgrounds.

Fig. 3 Silver Towers and 110 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan. (Photo copyright Andrew Moore, reproduced with permission.)

The Queens exhibit appeared to be the loser in a thematic tug-of-war over what should be shown where. The official explanation was that the City Museum exhibit covered Moses’ early career while Queens presented his later works, but I saw no evidence of this; rather, the spoils appeared to have been divided according to a mishmash of theme, geographic interest, and available floor space. The development of playgrounds was presented at Queens, but a display of Moses’s sometimes radical efforts to alter Central Park was placed at the City Museum, as was his still-unrealized attempt to turn Wards Island and Randalls Island into a “Central Park for the Twentieth Century.” The development of Long Island’s Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was discussed at Queens, but the construction of the United Nations Manhattan complex, which Moses originally wanted to put on a 310-acre campus in Flushing Meadows, was covered at the City Museum in a small display. It did include a bronze casting of a breathtakingly innovative playground by sculptor and landscape artist Isamu Noguchi that was favored by Secretary General Trygve Lie but vetoed by Moses in favor of a boilerplate parks department design. Had it been displayed at Queens, in juxtaposition to his creative 1930s playgrounds, Noguchi’s model would have provided stark testimony to the ossification of Moses’ later years.

It is likely that the decision to allocate most of the models to the City Museum came about because Queens already housed the grandest Moses model of them all: the New York Panorama, a basketball court–sized diorama of the five boroughs built for the 1964 Worlds Fair. (The building now housing the Queens Museum was the New York City Pavilion.) Moses, the fair director, ordered each of its bridges cast slightly oversize to make them appear more imposing, and his parks were painted florescent green and his housing projects brick red to make them stand out. The Panorama would have been the perfect tool to show how all the far-flung Moses creations evolved, over forty years, into a network of infrastructure that implemented his unique vision of the modern city, for better or worse. Inexplicably, the Panorama, a permanent exhibit, was completely divorced from the Moses show, with no references in one to the other. Lacking its orientation, the wall exhibits started to blur together.

In what I admit is a contradiction, this weakness is the catalog’s strength. Over half of its 336-page length is taken up by an illustrated portfolio of Moses’ parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, roads, bridges, and housing projects in the city. Presented as a row of pictures and labels on the wall, one after the other, they make the head swim, but laid out in a book according to a logical typology with a clear table of contents they comprise an invaluable reference and justify the claim of the curators that when it comes to Robert Moses the focus should be on the works, not the man. Let us hope that a companion portfolio of Moses projects outside of New York City, on Long Island and upstate, is somewhere in the works.

Of the three exhibits, Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution was the most self contained, the most technical, and the most revisionist. Moses’s work as chair of the Mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance has widely been perceived as a failure, a conclusion the exhibit and the corresponding catalog essay by Ballon take issue with. Using funds provided through Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, Moses and his selected private developers cleared 314 acres and built over twenty-eight thousand middle-class apartments and co-ops, all of which continue to flourish. (Subsidized public housing was built directly by the New York City Housing Authority—NYCHA—under Title III of the act.) Although many of the high-rises were architecturally bland, others featured innovative designs by I. M. Pei, George Shimamoto, and Paul Lester Wiener. Moses warned that New York was becoming a divided city of the rich and poor, and Title I successfully provided housing for a broad middle class of blue-collar workers, municipal employees, and clerks.

On the other hand, it was beset by problems, many of which the exhibit touches on only lightly. Just fifteen percent of those displaced by the slum clearance program were relocated in the Title I or Title III units intended to replace the lost housing. Moses initially favored consortiums of small private developers, who often failed miserably, and it was the big players, such as William Zeckendorf and Herbert Greenwald, who eventually pulled the program out of trouble. Title I was not primarily a housing program; it was for slum clearance, and it was often used to clear land for university buildings and cultural amenities for the wealthy. The program was not race neutral. Although the extent of Moses’s racial feelings were the subject of considerable debate at the symposium, it is clear that he did not strongly object as the NYCHA and his private developers systematically denied applications from single-parent households and the dependent poor, and that he embraced a “separate but equal” doctrine by using two middle-class Harlem projects, Lennox Terrace and Delano Village, to meet federal fair-housing requirements.

When asked at a panel discussion if Columbia’s own recent plans for a large development in West Harlem influenced its decision to sponsor the Moses exhibits, Kenneth Jackson responded dismissively that “those decisions were made long before the Manhattanville project was announced.” This seemed somewhat disingenuous given that Columbia, reportedly the owner of 70 percent of the land in the area, has been quietly assembling parcels for years. Hilary Ballon was more philosophical, pointing out that for all the dislocation the Title I projects caused they led to “a renaissance in the academic life of the city, and the new in-town campuses acted as engines of revitalization for the neighborhoods around them.” One only has to walk around the campus of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to see proof of this. Circling the restored main building, it is easy to forget that that project, mired in mismanagement, financial irregularities, and massive relocation abuse, helped force Moses’s resignation as Title I director in 1960.

Although three parks, two bridges, a dam, a highway, a power plant, a middle school, and other monuments carry his name, the only public work carrying Robert Moses’s name within New York City itself is a tiny dog run south of the United Nations that, by the time you read this, will likely have been razed for an office building. (Fordham, a private university, named a small plaza at its Lincoln Center campus in his honor in 1970.) Robert Moses and the Modern City already appears to be touching off one of the most spirited historical debates since the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit of 1995. It may be that the greatest legacy that “Big Bob the Builder” will leave in his adopted hometown is not the eponymous edifice he so badly wanted, but his name itself and the image of his scowling visage—the very personification of the benefits, the pain, the almost incalculable windfalls and wipeouts, and above all the clash of contending forces that make up the process of urban redevelopment in a city that is itself a cultural icon.

{3} The three exhibits: Remaking the Metropolis, at the Museum of the City of New York, 1 February to 28 May 2007; The Road to Recreation, Queens Museum of Art, 28 January to 27 May; and Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, 31 January to 14 April.

Bruce Epperson is an urban planner, land use attorney, and independent scholar who lives and works in the Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area. He is a frequent contributor to T&C.

Copyright© 2007, the Society for the History of Technology

When we were asked to write this review of Tom Tits for Technology and Culture, however, we wondered at first how a hands-on science center managed to capture a prize intended for museums—that is, we wondered whether “science centers” actually count as proper “museums.” But as the nestor of museology who founded the European Museum Forum, Kenneth Hudson, once wrote, it is “almost impossible to define a museum in a way which is universally acceptable.” For as society itself has evolved, so too has the concept of the museum.{2} Today, in fact, the International Council of Museums, which is closely related to UNESCO, officially recognizes science centers as legitimate museums.{3}

Museum professionals may not agree with this, of course. But if we take a longer view of the situation, we find that science centers, natural history museums, and museums of science and technology have shared a great deal in common in recent decades. During the late 1960s, when a number of large science centers were founded in North America—the Exploratorium in San Francisco, for example, and the Ontario Science Centre in London—they drew much of their inspiration from experiments carried out at the Deutsches Museum in Munich and at the Science Museum in London.{4} Today, according to the European Network of Science Centres and Museums, the situation is reversed, and museums of natural history and museums of science and technology now regularly look to science centers for inspiration.{5}

Museums and science centers are also alike in that both serve as informal educational institutions. Since its inception in 1977, the European Museum Forum has consistently worked to improve the quality of the museum experience by embracing visitor-friendly and interactive educational features, and this is why Tom Tits won the forum’s 2006 award. The official motto of Tom Tits Experiment is “experiment as methodology,” and in its prize citation, the forum emphasized the pedagogical value of the center’s stated goal: to explain basic scientific principles in a manner that is easily accessible to the visiting public, particularly younger visitors who might be inspired to continue to explore the world of science.

Our Experiment

Tom Tits Experiment is located in an old Alfa-Laval factory that was, at the turn of the twentieth century, the largest employer in Södertälje (fig. 1). The center’s name dates to the nineteenth century as well, when the French magazine L’Illustration published a series of articles describing do-it-yourself scientific experiments for children. Pseudonymously written by “Tom Tit,” these articles were published in a volume titled La Science Amusante (1890), which was quickly translated into several languages. When the center itself was established in 1987, its educational ambitions seemed to resonate with those of L’Illustration’s fictional author. Hence the unusual name.{6}

Fig. 1 Tom Tits Experiment is located in an old industrial building in Södertälje, Sweden, just south of Stockholm. (Author photo.)

We went to Tom Tits on a Friday afternoon in early January 2007, and to find out if it lives up to its pedagogical goals, we brought along a test panel consisting of three girls, twins the age of six and a three year old. The children in our test panel were of course too young to truly grasp the underlying principles of many of the experiments at the center. But nearly everything at Tom Tits fascinated them, and at times it was difficult to steer them along from station to station.

Tom Tits consists of four floors filled with hundreds of experiment stations, as well as a large garden (which is closed during the winter). A floor plan available at the entrance is an invaluable guide to the center’s many features. One can also purchase or borrow a large catalog containing detailed descriptions of each of the experiments. This catalog is useful, particularly since there are no printed panels or other explanations of the experiments at any of the stations, but it cannot replace the simpler floor plan as a navigational aid. Lockers are available at the entrance as well, and there is also a small area near the front doors where visitors can eat what they have brought along. A larger cafeteria lies on the second floor, adjacent to a gift shop selling brainteasers and replicas of the center’s experiments along with puzzles, books, postcards, and other standard museum souvenirs.

The experiments themselves are organized thematically, although the themes are not always transparent to visitors. The most obvious of them is the body, which is featured in a spacious room on the top floor. There, our panel was able to explore the different parts of the brain; remove and replace the internal organs of a full-scale human model (fig. 2); discover where new teeth are hidden on a six year old; and learn to their amazement that their dad actually contains two large demijohns of water!

Fig. 2 What parts do we consist of and where do they fit? (Author photo.)

The most notable attraction on the third floor was the section on chemistry. Here, Tom Tits regularly holds lectures for children on field trips in a small auditorium in which every chair represents an element on the periodic table. Schools can also arrange for the center to conduct chemical demonstrations and other experiments in this area. Next to this periodic-table room lies a thematic cluster on optics and optical illusions; however, the passive, hands-off nature of this section meant that our panel simply walked through and glanced at its colorful illustrations.

One of the most attractive thematic sections for our young panel was a station on the second floor that dealt with the properties of water. Here, the concept of surface tension was displayed in a cupola fountain (a large example of which one can enter during the summer); the inertia of a mass in motion was illustrated by a vortex of swirling water; and the principle of siphoning was demonstrated with a pair of cylinders and a tube. Children flocked to this section like bees to honey, and every parent there was grateful for the aprons provided for them.

A large aquarium filled with all sorts of fish is also located on the second floor of the center, not far from the section on water, and it features a central viewing area that is accessible to those small enough to crawl into it. Nearby, a section on mathematics features an oversized table and chairs (to remind adults of the way their children experience kitchen furniture and to teach their kids about the concept of scale), as well as a set of marbles on a tilted plane (to demonstrate the principle of the normal or Gaussian distribution).

A popular attraction on the first floor was a large bubble-maker, which is used to illustrate the reflection and refraction of light (fig. 3). Equally popular was a station designed to demonstrate energy-state changes by way of a marble that runs along a wooden track. A separate room on the first floor housed the most technologically oriented stations at Tom Tits, including a gear demonstration using cogs from an actual truck, as well as one in which visitors can test their wooden block–placing skills against those of a block-placing robot. In the center of this technology cluster stood the front cabin of a large truck, and our three-year-old panel member would have been content to spend the rest of the afternoon playing with its steering wheel and fiddling with its switches and dials.

Fig. 3 One of our panel members plays with the bubble generator, which illustrates the reflection and refraction of light. (Author photo.)

As previously mentioned, there are no explanatory panels or posters next to the experiments themselves, but detailed descriptions of each of them do appear in the center’s printed catalog. This catalog occasionally mentions the first person to have described and/or explained a certain phenomenon. For example, it explains that it was Bernoulli who first discovered that a ball placed just outside of a vertical stream of air will be pulled back into the stream. Fortunately for us grown-ups, the station demonstrating this was strategically located next to the cafeteria, allowing us to enjoy a cup of coffee while our test panel repeatedly tested the validity of Bernoulli’s Principle.

The citations in this catalog do not appear to celebrate humankind’s ingenuity, however, for they are more or less factual in character and seem to be designed to convey a timeless sense of curiosity over the principles of nature rather than a narrative of progress. Unfortunately, its detached tone and lack of contextual material also means that the catalog does not highlight any of the adverse consequences of scientific and technological change. One exception occurs in the center’s section on ecology, which draws attention to the ways in which hydroelectric power generation can interfere with the migrations of salmon.{7}

Tom Tits features very few computers and other multimedia installations to guide one’s movements through the stations. Instead, the individual experiments are simple, hands-on, intuitive, and can be explored in any order. For our panel, it was a joy to learn that they were actually expected to touch and play with everything. Hopefully, they and the other children who explore the center will remember what they have learned and will be inspired to help shape the scientific and technological decisions of tomorrow.

For the time being, though, our test panel remembers Tom Tits as a wonderful place to play, inquire, interact, and learn, and they have declared unanimously that they wish to return in the near future. The reviewers will be delighted to join them.

{1} European Museum of the Year Award: The Awards, 2006 (brochure); European Museum of the Year Award: The Candidates, 2006 (brochure).

{2} Kenneth Hudson, The European Museum of the Year Award, 1977–1997: A Mirror and a Catalyst of European Museum Change and Development. Available online at http://www.europeanmuseumforum.org (accessed 23 March 2007), p. 3 (quote).

{3} Ibid.

{4} Exploratorium, http://www.exploratorium.edu (accessed 23 March 2007).

{5} The European Network of Science Centres and Museums, http://www.ecsite.net (accessed 23 March 2007).

{6} Tom Tits Experiment, http://www.tomtit.se (accessed 23 March 2007).

{7} An alternative framework is favored at a smaller science center called Teknorama, which was inaugurated in 1985 (and is thus approximately the same age as Tom Tits); Teknorama is located at the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm. At Teknorama, the experiments are historically situated and the museum emphasizes the importance of placing science and technology into a wider context in order to “understand the consequences of technological development for people and our society—past, present, and future” (National Museum of Science and Technology in Sweden, http://www.tekniskamuseet.se [accessed 23 March 2007]).

Anna Storm, a doctoral candidate in the Department of the History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, is writing a dissertation about the reinterpretation and reuse of industrial areas. Nina Wormbs is an assistant professor in the same department and is working on media history and frequency allocation processes.

Copyright© 2007, the Society for the History of Technology