XLIII Scientific Instrument Symposium - SIC 2024

Session Chair: Peter Heering (Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany)

Islamic Scientific Instruments: a ‘meeting point’ of science, faith, art and culture
Author: Nicola Bird
Co-Author: Silke Ackerman
Scientific instruments from the Islamic world form a significant part of the extensive collections at the History of Science Museum (HSM), and provide an inspiring springboard for inclusive public engagement fostering intercultural dialogue and learning. Since 2017, MultakaOxford, a multi-award-winning inclusive volunteering programme based at HSM, has championed collaborative practice to bring diverse representation and narratives to science, history, culture, and faith, enriching our understanding of contemporary society.
In this paper the presenters share the learnings on its collaborative approaches and how this contributes to the museum's ambitious transformation 'Vision 2024'.

The paper will present a case study highlighting the role of scientific instruments in engaging young people and public audiences in celebrating Islamic art for the inaugural UNESCO International Day of Islamic Art (November 2023). Through a series of workshops based on geometry and drawing instruments facilitated by the museum and Oxford-based Iraqi artist Lana Al Sham, the museum connected young people at Oxford’s Sudanese Saturday School and Al Sham Academy with science, faith and culture.
The case study culminates in a public museum event Patterns in the Sky which was co-planned and co-delivered with Multaka volunteers. This inclusive family event connected Islamic scientific instruments, such as the astrolabe that belonged to Shah Abbas II, and inspired visitors with object-based activities including scientific instrument handling, interactive digital mapping, calligraphy workshops, geometric collage activities, and art workshops. The event included a display of the work created by the cultural schools displayed in the form of a mahreb.
The presentation seeks to engage dialogue and reflections on different approaches and their learnings in engagement with scientific instruments through art, culture and faith.

The Moon Bites the Sun: Learners’ explorations with Mesoamerican Mirrors, Sunlight, and Solar Eclipse
Author: Elizabeth Cavicchi
Co-Authors: Isis María Cota-Martínez; Marvelin Higgenbottom; Parimala Rajesh
How do today’s learners discover the Sun directly, its energy, changes and light, and relate to peoples who experienced it as Earth’s lamp of day? For ancient Mesoamericans, Sun was deity; it made Day. When eclipsed, people feared. Redirecting Sun or other light, mirrors figured centrally in Mesoamerican culture. Crafted from stone with immense labor and precision polishing, some Mesoamerican mirrors survive, including at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography. During collection workshops, curators Emily Rose and James Walkingstick engage us and MIT students with these, among other mystery objects. What do you notice? What materials? How made and used? We observe, marvel, immerse ourselves in objects’ past. At MIT’s Edgerton Center, and outdoors, students explore with glass mirrors, lenses, Sunlight. What will students explore, notice, try? These explorations are open-ended, unconstrained by answers. Taking a magnifier, while viewing grass – a bright spot appears. What’s that? Reorienting the magnifier intensifies it. Surprise! Smoke! Will it burn Wood!?! Curiosity drives students’ precision in positioning lens and wood. Excitement and coordination builds. Miniaturizing French 1774 experiments, a student’s lens scorches diamond dust! Photographed crescents cast by Mexican trees during October 14, 2023’s solar eclipse ignite student wonder and experimenting. April 8, 2024 brings solar eclipse from Mexico to Canada. We report impromptu and facilitated experiences in and out of totality, by instrumental methods ranging from hole projection to filters to telescopic imaging. For everyone – children, MIT students, public, amateurs – the Moon biting the Sun is as awesome as for ancient Mesoamericans.

Affiliations: MIT Edgerton Center; Centro de Investigación en Materiales Avanzados S.C. (CIMAV), Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico; MIT Edgerton Center; undergraduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Co-author Bio notes:

My name is Isis María Cota-Martínez, currently, I’m studying a Ph.D. in Material Science. I was born in Nogales, Mexico on January 13, 1994. My first approach to sky observation was at the age of 7 during a night walk with my dad, since then I’ve been passionate about Science.

Eclipses were tremendous events during Marvelin Higginbottom’s childhood in the Exotic Lands of Honduras. Mother confined her indoors, away from staring at the Sun! Fashion designing is her thing! MIT Edgerton Center Administrative Assistant, Marvelin leads MIT’s eclipse event “Watch the Moon Bite the Sun”, becoming the Latin Female Galileo!

MIT undergraduate Parimala Rajesh studies aeroastro and astronomy, codes with MIT’s Solar Electric Vehicle team, and explores campus tunnels. Her unbounded curiosity ranges from underground caves, to how planes fly, to the distant universe, and everywhere between.

Roues dentées et engrenages, nombres et opérations : allers et retours/ From cogwheels and gears to numbers and operations, and back
Auteur: Frédérique Plantevin
Mechanical calculating instruments can be studied from technological, historical and mathematical points of view. Together with a small group of primary and secondary mathematics and technology teachers, we developed and tested activities that exploit these three perspectives. First designed for students aged 10 to 13, they have subsequently led to teacher training courses; they were also partly tested with the public during the free tours of the Cabinet of Curiosity.

The sequence is based on the observation of a “Lightning calculator” adder and an Odhner type “Brunsviga 20” multiplier. The study of their characteristics shows some of the subtleties of the history of calculating instruments. But the crucial stage of the activity is the physical creation of a working prototype adder with a rudimentary kit provided (cogwheels, nails and support, graduation aid, stylus). To meet its specifications (add two three-digit numbers with automatic carryover) precise but with no indication other than the observation of the "Lightning calculator", it is necessary to closely link technological and mathematical issues. This leads to a concrete understanding of the operating principle of more advanced mechanical arithmetic machines (multipliers) which in turn, sheds new light on the mathematical operations they perform. This back-and-forth between instruments and the mathematical concepts they represent is an essential aim of this activity.

All these aspects will be presented succinctly but very concretely, with supporting examples and productions, leading hopefully to a fruitful exchange with the audience.

Session Chair: Peggy Kidwell (Smithsonian Institution, USA)

Dr. Margarita Piedra as Cuba's first female nuclear engineer. Her role in the development and training of nuclear science in Cuba.
Author: Lubia Díaz Bernal
Co-Author: Lidia Lauren Elías Hardy
Cuba has historically been characterized by its sexist culture and that is why Cuban women have worked hard towards the recognition of their equal rights. This paper aims to highlight the figure of women in the field of nuclear sciences, through the visibility of the first Cuban woman trained in Nuclear Engineering in Cuba and the USSR. Having graduated in Cuba in 1971, Piedra traveled to Moscow to complete her training at the Energy Institute of said city, in the department of Electro-Nuclear Power Plants. She was the only woman in a group of seven men, where the young and enterprising Margarita, due to her great talent and ability, appeared on the cover of the magazine “USSR” as an example of the Cuban female scientist. Creator of the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory within a young institution dedicated to teaching nuclear sciences in Cuba (InSTEC) in which she worked until her death in 2020. Due to the impossibility of obtaining adequate or advanced instruments for teaching, she developed glass instruments and installations so that students could observe the phenomena of heat and mass transfer, and fluid mechanics. Dr. Margarita Piedra was and continues to be the example to follow. continue for the brave and still rare Cuban women who have chosen to channel their lives into the world of nuclear technical sciences.

A Countess and her astrolabe at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900: social and intellectual capital at the turn of the century
Author: Sumner Braund
Why did the Comtesse de Lespinasse submit an astrolabe to the Musée rétrospectif de la classe 15: instruments de précision at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris?

The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 was designed to surpass all previous expos, and it attracted an estimated 50 million visitors in the course of its 8-month run. The city was transformed through new building projects, some permanent and others temporary, with extensive pavilions covering the city. The high profile of certain exhibitions, enhanced by the social status of their respective organisers, meant that these organisers not only curated displays – they also curated the social capital of objects and donors.

This paper will explore the ways in which Louise Marie Robertine Maillard de Liscourt, Comtesse de Lespinasse, navigated this environment and successfully displayed her astrolabe. The astrolabe that she submitted to Classe 15 had been made in 1227/8 CE for an Ayyubid ruler and nephew of Saladin. The magnificent instrument’s inclusion in Classe 15 raises many questions, including: why did the Comtesse choose this classe? What does this reveal about the status of women in this social and intellectual environment? What did it mean in this space for a French woman to assert physical and intellectual ownership of an instrument from the Islamic world?

This paper will address these questions using correspondence and notarial records from the Lespinasse family, the published records of the Classe 15, and the sale records of the astrolabe (which was sold to another collector, Lewis Evans, in 1911).

Women computers at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1890–1939
Author: Louise Devoy
In April 1890, Astronomer Royal William H. M. Christie (1845-1922) hired the first group of women to be employed in professional astronomy at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Although this initial cohort only stayed for a few years, it set the trend for the ongoing recruitment of women who became an essential part of the Observatory’s staff.

Using archive materials and recently discovered observing notebooks, I will examine the women’s contribution through various questions: how did their roles compare to those of their male colleagues at Greenwich, particularly with respect to the use of instruments? Were they acknowledged in the same way in official publications? How did their experience at Greenwich shape their career and opportunities elsewhere?

These questions will be addressed across three main time periods, starting with the appointment of the ‘lady computers’ in the 1890s, who were ostensibly hired to make observations to facilitate the Observatory’s participation in the Astrographic Catalogue but who also became involved with other departments and instruments.

The second phase considers the First World War period when a few women were either recruited or invited to return to their previous roles as volunteers in response to the vacancies created by the call-up of male staff for military service.

Finally, I will consider the small group of women recruited as ‘Supernumerary Computers’ during the inter-war years who were assigned a variety of computing and data analysis roles.

The anatomical Venus models as epistemic instruments: value influences in the representation of women in science
Author: Alexandra Karakas
The history of science is rich in debates centred around problems concerning material culture and its relation to knowledge production. However, the issue of epistemic/internal and non-epistemic/external values in the sciences is still developing. While contemporary debates surrounding the presence of external and internal values in different phases of the production of scientific knowledge offer a great source of insight, the history of science is still overloaded with instances of value pluralism within physical instruments that are yet to be discussed.

A particularly interesting category of instruments are objects used for representing the female body. A prominent example of these are anatomical models, notably pieces made in Felice Fontana's workshop in Florence in the 18th century. While the functions of material models were diverse, from knowledge dissemination to entertaining, the peculiarity lies in that they were designed with not only internal scientific values in mind, such as clarity and coherence, but they were influenced by external values, such as artistic values, at the same time. These value-laden decisions led to a unique representation of the female body that mirrors the period’s take on social and scientific issues as well. The talk focuses on a lesser-known Fontana model initially commissioned by Joseph II for the newly founded medical academy in Vienna, which was later gifted to the medical faculty in Budapest. The research details the model's rich history and emphasises how external, artistic values determined many representational decisions, resulting in a peculiar visual portrayal of womanhood in the 18th century.

Women assistants using scientific instruments in Tartu before and after World War Two
Author: Janet Laidla
More women entered the staff of universities and other research institutions at the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century as calculators, demonstrators and assistants. These assistant positions may have encompassed many different things: from mostly clerical work (typing, correspondence), teaching duties, assisting the researchers, conducting individual research, to keeping libraries and taking care of collections. This also depended from one faculty to another.

The main goal of this presentation is to reveal how many assistants at Tartu had any contact with scientific instruments based on the institutional archival materials and papers from scientific journals. In Athens I briefly introduced one of the women assistants at the astronomical observatory who used a small telescope. How many more examples can we find? We know, for example, that assistants working at the faculty of medicine w

Session Chair: Alexandra Rose (Science Museum, UK)

Musings of a Curator - Precision and Accuracy in Online Museum Catalogues of Scientific Instruments
Author: Peggy Aldrich Kidwell
As museums seek to make holdings more widely available online many of us are reexamining instruments and records. Once cataloging was for internal use, focusing on museum numbers, object and source names, storage locations, and dimensions. Public access came through print publications, often focused on a single sort of object (e.g., a collection of astrolabes). The audience was distinguished, but small. Labels for the few objects placed on exhibit reached more people but were brief.

Many printed catalogs have been digitized and circulate online. Both initial and revised cataloging is now done on computer databases rather than typed cards, and much of the content is online for computer users across the world.
At NMAH, there has been greater emphasis on uploading records from databases than on assuring that they are useful, accurate or complete. However, some of us have reexamined records to provide accurate information and historical context. Website visitors can learn about such instruments of precision as Ramsden’s dividing engine and such feats of precise calculation as a 1961 printout of the first 100,000 digits of pi, as computed on an IBM 7090 computer. At the same time, there are efforts to use digitized museum records to make more precise counts of the number of objects in the museum – or at least the number of numbers that have been assigned (e.g., does one set of seven drawing instruments in a case count as one, seven, or eight objects?) Dates assigned and dimensions given also raise questions of precision.

Public Instruments of Precision
Author: Tacye Phillipson
Over the decades, our museum in Edinburgh has displayed a small number of working scientific instruments to the visiting public, giving access to precise readings of phenomena including the time, weather and ground tremors. They coexisted on the galleries with objects which worked as demonstrations and interactives, and which have a similarity to interactives and moving demonstration objects that are presently in the galleries. They provided access to the real objects of science in ways in which retired relics or replication cannot.

These working instruments of public precision have previously been considered separately, each as part of the subject that they related to, such as featuring as part of the story of the Edinburgh time service, or in listing of seismographs. In this presentation I will explore them together as a type of exhibit, with a focus on the public accessibility of the working instruments and how this was portrayed by the museum and, where evidence exists, how this access was received by the visitors.

21st Century Online Accessibility to Scientific Instrument Collections and the Need for a Science and Technology Thesaurus: A Pilot
Author: Trienke van der Spek
Co-Author: Christel Schollaardt
In January 2024 five Dutch science museums and the Dutch governmental Cultural Heritage Agency launched collections-based online platform Vind het Uit (Invent it). It gives pupils and students access to scientific and technological objects from five museum collections with a uniform and new disclosure that allows free association and creative use of this heritage.

The platform is the first result of a longer-term collaboration that aims at improving the online visibility, accessibility and usability of Dutch science collections – and scientific instruments in special – by generating a central, standardized and durable online access to these sources in an (inter)national context.
During this first pilot project uniform disclosure of the collections proved to be more challenging than expected, despite the comparability of the collections, the use of the same collection database software by all and the shared ambition to work towards a disclosure of collections by Linked Open Data. One of the most important issues was the lack of a professional online thesaurus for scientific heritage with the a sufficient level of precision and versatility. As a result this project gave birth to an unexpected, but very much needed result: a first version of a Science and Technology Thesaurus (STT).

This paper presents the insights from this project and discusses next steps. It also includes an ambitious call to the SIC community to explore the development of an international STT as a tool to improve online accessibility to scientific instrument collections worldwide.

Session Chair: Richard Kremer (Dartmouth College, USA)

Man, Machine or both? Reconsidering the precision of stereoscopic rangefinders
Author: Andreas Junk
The precision of rangefinders can be considered to be depending from the components of the instruments, which are used for distance measurements. This is particularly true for rangefinders as devised by Pacecco ab Ucedos (1762) or Georg Brander (1781). But those instruments are developed to be in a state, where a more or less untrained observer can easily adjust the settings and make a readout of the result. What if the operator with his unique set of experiences and training becomes a part of the instrument? Or maybe even worse: what if the operator's physiological limits also set an operational limit for the instrument?

The stereoscopic rangefinder of the Zeiss company, first presented as a measurement concept in 1899 on a model provided by the then-deceased Hector de Grousilliers, is based on Helmholtz's telestereoscopic design from 1857 and works with stereoscopic triangular distance marks. For both of these reasons, the operator's physiology plays an important role in determining a correct readout of the distance. Hence the question arises, if an instrument, which is prone to the imperfections of its human operator, can be considered a precision measurement device.

When precision is not a virtue: three forensic science objects where persuasiveness is the most important metric.
Author: Kristen Frederick-Frost
Three artifacts—a display of arsenic tests from the 1872 trial of Lydia Sherman, John Larson’s 1921 cardio-pneumo-psychogram for lie detection, and a sexual assault examination kit from the early 1980s—used precision in process, presentation, and procedure to validate investigative analyses. We can also consider how these objects were not just tools of systematic study but products of their maker’s beliefs about what was needed to make their work convincing beyond the science itself.

Professor George Frederick Barker’s shotgun approach to the presentation of arsenic tests invites us to think about how a previous poisoning case featuring warring medical experts created a perceived need to give the jury multiple types of chemical analyses for several victims. John Larson’s lie detector had to balance perceptions of two different audiences—that of the suspect and that of the fact finder. For the former, Larson needed to create an emotional response, ideally a suspect’s fear and anxiety. For the latter, Larson wanted to create an objective paper record that stood on its own outside of an interrogation. And the Vitullo sexual assault kit found acceptance because one of its creators, Marty Goddard, immersed herself in the reticence of police and medical professionals alike to investigate these crimes. The contents of this early kit, as well as those that follow, represent a negotiation between what various communities found necessary and worthy.

Each of these objects is a manifestation of a maker’s desire to be more than precise. They wanted to be persuasive.

Post-Earthquake Pioneer: The Application of the Low Altitude Remote Sensing System on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Author: Zhao Ke
Co-Authors: Congting Hao, Deli Chen
On May 12, 2008, a powerful earthquake at 8.0 Ms hit Wenchuan, a mountainous area in western Sichuan, China. Nearby, amounts of “quake lakes” formed by severe landslide, threatening the people living downstream. On May 13, the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China assembled a volunteer group with six institutions. They brought a low-altitude remote sensing system on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to Wenchuan to help. The UAV was capable of a 200-kilometer range in two hours, with wooden structure and a 38cc gasoline engine. The remote sensing instrument could take 0.2 m solution photos from 1000 meters above. They inspected the landslide dam-created Tangjiashan Lake, providing the data and rendered photo to the Prime Minister as a command. It helped the government to take measures to discharge flood from the dam bursting and evacuated people from downstream Mianyang City with a 5 million population. During 12 days, they detected over 100 rivers with the instrument, and gathered data of 34 risky lakes.

This study traces the instrument’s historical application in disaster contexts. Although the remote sensing instrument lacked groundbreaking technological innovations, its practicability surpassed other counterparts. In metrology, advancing both frontier research and translating it into engineering products is paramount. The system's deployment underscores the pivotal role of precision scientific instruments in informing decision-making during crises, emphasizing the necessity for a dual focus on theoretical advancement and practical application in scientific research.