Museums and Collections

Abstract

The chapter “Museums and Collections” gives the reader detailed information about the collections of important museums (e.g., in Athens, Beijing, Berlin, Bletchley Park, Bonn, Clermont-Ferrand, Dresden, Florence, Kassel, London, Madrid, Manchester, Melbourne, Milan, Mountain View, Munich, Neuchâtel, Ottawa, Oxford, Paderborn, Paris, Stockholm, Strasbourg, Vienna, and Washington). Most of these are museums of science, technology, and art. The chapter examines analog and digital calculating aids, historical automatons, and robots, as well as scientific instruments. The first mechanical calculating aids (Schickard, Pascal, Morland, and Leibniz) date from the seventeenth century. The chapter also describes where originals and reconstructions of famous objects (e.g., the Antikythera mechanism, Babbage’s difference engine, the Colossus, the Csirac, Hollerith’s punched card equipment, the Johnniac, the Leibniz machine, the Pascaline, the Pilot Ace, the Roman hand abacus, Schickard’s calculating clock, the Thomas arithmometer, the Turing-Welchman Bombe, and the Zuse Z4) are found. Furthermore, the question of which are the oldest surviving mechanical and electronic computers is addressed. The early one-, two-, and four-function machines are summarized in overview tables. The world’s most magnificent calculating machines, including the replicas of Roberto Guatelli, are described. The oldest large museums of technology (Dresden and Paris) date from the eighteenth century. Their forerunners were often royal wonder and curiosity cabinets from the early modern era. Scientific societies were founded as early as the seventeenth century and mathematical associations from the nineteenth century. The first world exhibition was the Great Exhibition, which took place in London in 1851. Today, the most important collections, and in part also object databases, are accessible on the Internet.