Museum Exhibitions; Ships, Clocks and Stars · 12:30am Mar 20th, 2016
The candlestick used by Starswirl the Bearded to light the way when he was exploring the caverns of Maretania. Before it was destroyed by an irresponsible draconequus, who should never be let near any such important artefacts. There’s a story here…
This is a post for any fellow museum nerds.
I love museums. And I have always found visiting them is a great way to find inspiration for writing. So many fascinating stories behind the objects on display, and you can’t help but imagine your own to add to these… Or ponder how such a story would have played out in the pony world… Fanfiction and fantasy writers have an advantage here—we can just make up all the details to fit around an idea, whereas for writers of proper historic fiction, visiting an exhibition would just be the start of an extended amount of reading and research into a particular historical period.
One of the many sources of inspiration for my story Time on Their Hooves was the Ships, Clocks, and Stars exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. While out there, I also took the time to visit the Royal Observatory at 0° longitude. The exhibition, subtitled: The Quest for Longitude, was put together to mark the anniversary of the Longitude Prize. It tells the stories behind the effort to find a way to determine longitude (degrees east or west) at sea during the eighteenth century. This was my sort of exhibition – a great mix of history and science, well explained, with lots of cool bits of mechanical engineering with moving parts.
This is a story with two parts: the clocks part is the tale of John Harrison’s efforts to build a clock which could keep time on board a ship to the level of precision needed to determine longitude accurately. All his famous clocks were on display. The larger, earlier pieces are the more visually impressive, as you can watch the spring-loaded pendula oscillate, driving a chain of gears of extraordinary complexity. His masterpiece: H4, looks rather more boring – just a large pocket watch – but this was the design which would be improved and mass produced in the following century.
The other story is the stars part. The effort to fix the universal time (and hence longitude) from the position of the moon relative to the stars. By the mid eighteenth century, Newton’s laws were well enough understood to predict the position of the moon in principle, but the formidable scale of the calculations meant compiling the tables for the Nautical Almanac was no easy matter. Initially done by human ‘computers’, this task would provide the motivation for the development of mechanical calculators such as Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine.
The exhibition is no longer in Greenwich, and has now moved to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. If anyone living near there has some free time over the next week, I can totally recommend a visit. It stays there until March 28, and will they move to Sydney, Australia.
The travelling exhibition is only displaying replicas of Harrison's clocks, as apparently, the risk of damage from moving them across the Atlantic was considered too high. This does seem incredibly ironic as this is exactly what they were built for.
I’m now off to a particle physics meeting in Brighton, then hoping to take a bit of time off before Easter, and maybe visit some more museums. Yay!
I hereby dub thee Pineta, Prince of Nerds.
(On a side note, I'm jealous :)
I saw the exhibition in Greenwich, and loved it. I particularly enjoyed the dog-stabbing-at-noon scheme!
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Prince? Who the heck does he have to depose to be made King?
New particles to look forward to in Easter.
Or like other SD 1.5 lumps, maybe not?
But if they do.
Also, orbital LIGO to come online.
Wonder if given the very simple plastic watch, the new 3D printer on the ISS will be good enough to print clockwork. Once it gets there?
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Interesting how that's the bit everyone remembers. Those poor dogs
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¿How do you know that Pineta is a Stallion? I personally figure that it is better that we not know whether we are mares or stallions. We should focus on the science. Who is a mare or stallion is irrelevant.
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Well, you can hardly come up with something as stupid and cruel as that, so it is remarkable. It's good to remember that it was actually taken seriously and tried out, particularly when listening to some adverts nowadays.
I would love it if this exhibit traveled to my local science museum, The Science Museum of Minnesota. I've been to a few traveling exhibits.
Bodyworlds was truly the most amazing exhibit to date. I saw that back in 2006. The human body truly is a wonder. Seeing the workings of life so... openly displayed like that is awe inspiring! That was Incomprehensibly beyond incredible.
Oh, and they even had a horse there!
I also saw the robotics exhibit "Robots and Us", back in 2004, and got to see some of the famous MIT leg lab robots, like Genghis and Hannibal (I can't remember if Attila was there or not). I think Cog was there too. Honestly, it was a joy to see those amazing robots!
I recently saw their space exhibit (last year), but in all honestly, it was a little underwhelming. Very few artifacts, mostly models, posters and such. They had a couple demo experiments. It felt more like an exhibit aimed almost exclusively at kids. I kinda wish I had known that beforehand. They had a* pair of gloves and a helmet worn by Neil Armstrong... I suppose there isn't much that goes into space that NASA lets go of, but they could have made more of an effort, considering public interest is best for their interests!
*No one said when or where they were worn... could have been terrestrial training, for all anyone knows?
Furthermore, I'm so sick of "space trucks"... I realize they retired the Shuttle, but we've been sitting in low Earth orbit for SOOOO long now..., and now the space trucks are Russian or Japanese or European probes... The trucks don't even necessarily have drivers anymore. Apollo was out greatest manned achievement, and there was barely any mention of the HISTORY of space flight... I went expecting at least a reasonable timeline, maybe with a few props or something... But the entire exhibit primarily focused on space now, and that meant the ISS. That's all fine and well, but the whole exhibit really felt... bland... I think it's because I view space past as space future... We've backpedalled and are only just barely getting back to looking forward, beyond LEO. At least the probes have been wonderful! NASA is to timid though. Too reckless, ignoring problems, two disasters, and now they're afraid to get their feet wet with any level of risk taking. No one wants to die in a rocket explosion, or burn up in reentry... But I don't think any one of the people who go up would ever say the risk wasn't worth the reward.
I kinda feel strongly about how... underwhelming that exhibit was. Space should be exciting! Adventurous! I was barely even "whelmed"...
I guess I've seen both ends of the spectrum, in terms of Science Museum exhibits... The best of the best, and the most mediocre. I still wouldn't trade it for anything else. Even the semi lame space exhibit still and a few cool elements. I went to Body worlds like three times! I'd have gone to the robotics exhibit multiple times, had it been feasible for me to do at the time. I am a fan of clockwork, so indeed, this exhibit is one I'd love to see someday make it to Minnesota. I suppose one good fact of the clocks being replicas, is that they can literally send them wherever they want, and not have to worry over the original exhibit.
And yes... You could cut that irony with a knife!
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Space is an interesting case study for museum-exhibition-studies. A lot of shows are put together by space scientists, who want to showcase the latest projects they are involved with, and don’t always appreciate that what excites them is not the same as what excites the general public. The Planck mission is doing top science, but it’s very difficult to popularise. Apollo stuff seems very old fashioned to the science community. But the history of human space flight is far more popular with space fans. Museum curators understand this better – the London Science Museum Cosmonauts exhibition was a big hit.
I just spent the day in Portsmouth, geeking out over historic ships.
I spent my day out at the mystic seaport today, and it was absolutely fantastic. Replicas though they may be, H1, H2, and H3 were mesmerizing to watch. I was also very pleased to find that they had they orginal H4 case as one of the exhibits, even if it wasn't working. Most of my knowledge on the subject came from Time on their Hooves, and seeing the H1-H4 in an exhibit in real life was the most surreal experience I've ever had with fanfiction. The only thing that would have made the day better would have been a functioning water clock.
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you Pineta, both for your fantastic stories (Time on their Hooves in particular), and the advice to go see the exhibit. Keep up the great work!
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Thanks for the nice comment. Glad that you made it to the exhibition and enjoyed it. The history of the Longitude prize and Harrison's clocks is a strangely fascinating story and the exhibition did a great job in telling it. I was trying to recreate some of that magic in my work.