Session Chair: Janet Laidla (University of Tartu, Estonia)
Recent Additions to the McPherson Collection of Scientific Instruments
Author: Jean Barrette
The McPherson Collection of the McGill Physics Department comprises a number of physical instruments and apparatus dating from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Many of those apparatuses were originally used in the Physics Department for research, teaching and demonstration and cover various aspects of mechanics, electricity and magnetism, heat, light, and sound. At the end of 2023, the manager of our undergraduate laboratories retired after more than 50 years of service at McGill. We took advantage of his occasion to retire many old apparatuses from the Department of Physics stock and move them to our McPherson Collection. The most interesting items will be presented. It includes: a high precision dip needle magnetometer, Wheatstone Bridges including one with Post Office Pattern, a 12 plate Echelon, a collection of old galvanometers, high precision potentiometers including a Dauphine Potentiometer produce by a Canadian company, an electrostatic colorimeter, Mica Condensers, and General Electric old H tubes, etc.
Architect’s Tools in Context: Collections in Turkey and Canada
Author: Gul Kale
This paper will explore the Ottoman architect’s tools, such as cubits and compasses in museum collections in Turkey and Canada by considering artistic, scientific, technological, and social transformations in architectural practice and theory. First, I will present a comparison between the museum collections in Istanbul and Ottawa, which have large repositories of measuring sticks. Istanbul Pera Museum’s “Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection” has an extensive collection that relates to Ottoman building traditions. On the other hand, Canada Science and Technology Museum has a similar collection consisting of cubits and balances, whose provenance has been examined to a certain degree. However, this collection has never been discussed within the context of wider early modern Ottoman building traditions by also comparing its contents to similar collections in Turkey. Whereas the circulation of tools globally was linked to collector’s personal interests and mobility, it is crucial to place these tools and their transmission within changing architectural and technological contexts that led to the transfer of these tools from the building sites to the collections turning them into museum objects devoid of context or use. Thus, the paper will explore the ways in which early modern social, scientific, cultural, and artistic changes made these tools dispensable at specific historical moments that initiated their move from workshops and building sites to the museums.
Work in Progress - America: How Science Built a Nation
Author: Elissavet Ntoulia
This paper will present a research project and a possible related display under development in the Science Museum in London about science and technology’s role towards the foundation of the USA.
In the context of mid-18th century colonial America, the project explores science and technology as tools of colonialism used to claim land, exploit natural resources, further knowledge and shape identity. For example, surveying was essential to land claiming and shaped national territoriality of the nascent USA. Surveyor’s tools such as the compass and the chain were widely used in this project of claiming vast American land that had already been managed and shaped by diverse Indigenous nations for thousands of years. The project engages with this complex history using an 'Atlantic' lens to go beyond the binary 'colonial periphery' and 'imperial centre' showcasing a rich tapestry of people where knowledge and goods were exchanged and circulated in dynamic and uneven relationships. By highlight such diverse and often obscured scientific thinking, it endeavours to question preconceived ideas about historic science.
I will pose some of these questions that our project is considering at this stage and present some of the methods by which we hope to answer them: What less discussed aspects of the use and application of scientific instruments the colonial American context can offer? In what politically and culturally complex worlds have such instruments operated? How can these considerations be presented in an exhibition with limited budget and space? At the end, whose science and at what end?
Bridging Cultures and Epochs: Tracing the Heritage and Development of Boğaziçi University's Scientific Collection in Istanbul
Author: Hasan Umut
This paper aims to offer an introduction to a historically remarkable collection of scientific instruments owned by Boğaziçi University’s Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute in Istanbul. Encompassing over 200 artifacts from both Islamic and Western scientific cultures, the collection features seismographs, quadrants, astrolabes, clocks, barometers, theodolites, telescopes, globes, octants, and sextants. Most of these instruments date back to the Ottoman period, aligning with the foundation of the Ottoman Royal Observatory (Rasadhāne-i Āmire) in the nineteenth century. Over time, the collection expanded to meet the evolving demands of the observatory's functions, incorporating new instruments reflective of its growing needs. This paper aims to delve into the concurrent development of this collection with the establishment of the modern Ottoman observatory, underscoring the directors' dual focus: their commitment to modernizing the observatory to meet contemporary scientific requirements and their reverence for the tradition of Islamic astronomical instrumentation, especially as embodied by Fatin Gökmen (d. 1955). By examining the distribution and utility of the instruments within the collection, the study highlights the interwoven relationship between the provenance of these instruments and the institutionalization of modern astronomical, meteorological, and seismological research in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic.
