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TelltaleApparatus

t last, Harvard’s Collectionof Historical Scientific Instru-

ments has come up from its hiding placein the basement of the Science Center toreveal itself, radiantly, in the new PutnamGallery on the main floor. That is, some 400of its more than 20,000 objects have taken uppermanent residence in the 2,000-square-footgallery. Another 1,000 square feet of gallery space on the floor abovehouses temporary exhibitions staged by faculty members, students, and in-vited artists and researchers.

Harvard has acquired scientific instruments on a continuous basis for teach-ing and research since 1672. The elderly pieces of apparatus gathered here, made of brass, ebony, glass, wood, and ingenuity, have many individual tales to tell of jobsaccomplished, the search for knowledge, and sometimes its discovery. In this photo-graph, the view is from a point near the back of the gallery, reflecting recent time, throughyears of people doing science to the Colonial era at front. Sara Schechner ’79, Ph.D. ’82,

A

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P h o t o g r a p h s b y J i m H a r r i s o n

Wheatland curator of the collection, has clustered objectsthematically. The prism-shaped case in the foreground con-cerns experiments on perception in Harvard’s psychologi-cal laboratory, founded by William James. Prominent is Ed-ward Titchener’s color pyramid, circa 1924, a model ofvisual sensations defined by color, brightness, and satura-tion. Farther forward are some of the precision clocks thatHarvard used when it was in the business of selling time.(Between 1831 and 1857 there were 97 train wrecks in NewEngland, most blamed on timekeeping based on thesun—and thus varying east to west—by communitiesalong the single-track lines. The College Observatorybegan to distribute standard time by wire to Boston andthence to other stations throughout the region. Trains col-lided less often. The system led to the establishment of thefirst time zone.)

The instrument collection, one of the greatest in theworld, is unusual, says Schechner, because of the documen-tation in hand about the provenance and early uses of somany of its pieces of apparatus. Many were employed atHarvard, by graybeard faculty members or eager students,and the gallery features these, although not exclusively.

“The collection has become fully integrated into the re-search and teaching of the department of the history of sci-ence, offering support for work by undergraduates, gradu-ate students, and faculty, as well as researchers fromaround the world,” writes Allan M. Brandt—chair of thatdepartment, director of the collection, a professor of thehistory of science and, at the Medical School, a professor ofthe history of medicine—in a pamphlet of essays given outat the gallery. He adds that the collection serves also “as ameans of educating the general public about the important

Left: Hollis professor John Winthropobserved in Cambridge the transit ofVenus of 1769 with this 24-inch Gregorian reflecting telescope by JamesShort, London, 1764. Below: Celestialglobe by John Senex, before 1740, withadditions by Benjamin Martin, London,1757. Behind it, left, is an air pump withflywheel for rotating and rubbing objects together in vacuo, by AbbéJean-Antoine Nollet, Paris, ca. 1746. Inthe background, the Grand Orrery byJoseph Pope, Boston, 1776-1786. Thismechanical model of the solar systemwas acquired by Harvard with fundsraised by a lottery in 1788. The celestialdome is supported by bronze figurescast by Paul Revere. Professor of thehistory of science Mario Biagioli notesthat instruments of this period wereclassified as mathematical or philosoph-ical. Mathematical ones were meant toget a specific job done, such as findingtime (see the sundials opposite). Theair pump is an example of a philosophi-cal instrument, expected to providenew insights into how nature works.

Between 1831 and 1857 there were 97 train wrecks in New England, most blamed on timekeeping based on the sun….

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All Harvard students of the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries were required to learnhow to make sundials. The collection includesnumerous portable dials; note the one in theshape of a viola da gamba, likely French, ca.1620, for use by a lady. Some dials, like aSwiss Army knife, contained many usefultools. On the shelf, numbered 8, is a geomet-rical and military compass, made to Galileo’sspecifications by Marcantonio Mazzoleni,Padua, ca. 1603, for presentation to the Dukeof Mantua. The duke could have used it toaim his cannon and calculate the amount ofpowder for a shot of a certain bore and material. Not a philosophical instrument.

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roles played by material culture in the making of modern sci-entific disciplines.” A broad range of those is represented,from astronomy, navigation, and surveying to geology, physics,medicine, mathematics, and communication.

The collection was established in 1949 by David P. Wheat-land, later joined by Ebenezer Gay, to save the University’s sig-nificant scientific apparatus from being cannibalized for partsor discarded because no longer used. At first, physicistWheatland kept the instruments in his office in Cruft Labora-tory. The collection moved to the basement of the Semitic Mu-seum, to the basement of Perkins Hall, to Allston Burr LectureHall, and, in 1980, to the Science Center underworld. CuratorSchechner still forages, and snatched up the control panel ofthe Harvard cyclotron when that facility shut down in 2001.Today’s obsolete technology may be tomorrow’s museum piece.

The Putnam Gallery can be found near the east entrance ofthe Science Center, at 1 Oxford Street in Cambridge, and isopen to the public, free of charge, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mon-days through Thursdays. �christopher reed

Left: A case of acoustical artifacts.At top are eight stoppered organpipes by Rudolph Koenig, Paris, ca.1889. In front of them is a photo-graphic record of sound waves produced by a phonodeik made byDayton C. Miller, Cleveland, 1909.On the lower shelf, Helmholtz resonators for sound analysis, alsoby Koenig, ca. 1865. Resonatorswere tone detectors, being tuned to respond to specific frequencies ofsound. Just as a prism could sepa-rate light into colors, a bank ofresonators could sort sound into elemental tones. Hermann vonHelmholtz’s resonators confirmedOhm’s theory that complex soundswere the Fourier sum of simple sinu-soidal sound waves, or harmonics.

Above, from left: Culpeper-type compound microscope with originalbox, by Matthew Loft, London, ca.1724-1740. Cuff-type compound microscope by Claude Simeon Passe-mant, Paris, ca. 1745-1769. “Greatdouble” compound microscope byJohn Marshall, London, ca. 1693.

Opposite: At back is the control console of the Harvard cyclotron,just as it looked on the day in 2001when the machine was turned off forgood. Built in 1947 to advancephysics, the cyclotron was used laterto irradiate hard-to-excise tumors. In front, with high-tech taping, is arange modulator, which controlledthe depth of penetration of the pro-ton beam into the target. This onewas used in the 1980s by AndreasKoehler in an osteoporosis-detectionexperiment on a live cat. (The catwas unharmed.)

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