Can a scientific instrument be regarded as a failure? Why and how? By shedding light on the complexity of these questions, the volume marks a step forward in the way historical scientific instruments can be analysed and displayed.
The essays show how diverse failures can be, and how the assessment of scientific devices may change over time some surprisingly becoming more successful. In addition to studies of how technical features led to failure, the authors examine the roles played by social bias and behaviour, commercial and economic circumstances, and political factors.
List of Illustrations
Contributors
Introduction: Failed Historical Scientific Instruments
Sara J. Schechner and Sofia Talas
1. An Archive of Failed Inventions: The Museum of the Admiralty Compass
Observatory
Richard Dunn
2. The Diffusion Hygrometer: A Commercial Failure
Jean-Franēois Loude
3. Extremely Poor: An Equatorial Mount that Failed
Johan Kärnfelt
4. A Telescopes Lack of Fortune: The Newall Telescope
Panagiotis Lazos and George N. Vlahakis
5. Not All Bad: Rehabilitating Phrenology in Museums
Tacye Phillipson
6. Finding Way at Sea Alternatives to the Log-Line and Sand Glass. The
British Experience in the Hanoverian Era: Conservative Navigational Practice
or Technological Failure?
D.J. Bryden
7. The Transmission X-Ray Microscope: Super Microscope for Biology or Yet
Another Niche Instrument?
Andreas Junk
8. From Complex to Simple: The Example of Qibla-Indicators
Razieh S. Mousavi
9. Pedro Nunes, Tycho Brahe, and Orazio Borgondio: Two Failed Schemes to Read
Angular Scales?
Luķs Tirapicos
10. Thomas Youngs Eriometer: Wrong Time, Wrong Inventor, Wrong Users?
Michelle Mercier
11. Black and White Images in a Grey Area of Failure: The Photo-Theodolite at
the Royal Geographical Society in the 1920s
Jane Wess
12. A Failure, an Icon or Beyond: The Cloud Chamber of the University of
Padua
Sofia Talas and Giulio Peruzzi
13. Failures, an Instrument Makers Perspective
Nicoląs de Holster
Index
Sara J. Schechner is David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments and Lecturer on History of Science at Harvard University. She serves on the Editorial Board for the Scientific Instrument Commissions series, Scientific Instruments and Collections.
Sofia Talas is the Curator of the Giovanni Poleni Museum, at the University of Padua.
