If you’re heading down to the store you might be looking for lathes, hunting for hydrometers or searching for shuttles, but you might also discover an unexpected slice of history.
Our collection documents 250 years of discoveries and innovations that began in Manchester and went on to influence the world. In this section of the blog, we want to shine a light upon the achievements and experiences of the people behind those stories.
In the first of a series looking at inventions that didn’t quite live up to the hype, Archives Manager Jan Hicks reveals some very fashionable footwear…
Archivist Jan Shearsmith takes us on another sneak peak into the Science and Industry Museum archives. Here, he discusses how cataloguing descriptions can never quite live up to the experience of finding an unexpected and mysterious collections gem.
What do Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Jonathan Creek and the Associate Curator at the Science and Industry Museum have in common? We all love solving a mystery.
We’ve been thinking about Rocket a lot recently. Not just its engineering excellence that sets it apart from its rivals, but the stories of the people surrounding the iconic locomotive as well.
In the second part of our blog post about George and Robert Stephenson, we turn our attention towards the younger’s achievements and the elder’s last years.
To get you into the festive mood, here’s a trip into the Science Museum Group collections to find a very random but very *us* 12 Days of Christmas…
Former archivist Jan Shearsmith takes us through a collection he found in 2018 documenting the training exploits of a pilot in the early days of the RAF.
Curator of Engineering Sarah Baines takes a look at the innovative thinking of James Joule, whose ideas on heat and energy were initially thought to be so revolutionary they were rejected by the scientific establishment.
It was a dark and stormy night… We have some weird, wonderful and decidedly spooky things in the Science Museum Group collections so for the creepiest day of the year let’s take a trip to the basement and remember to bring your pointiest stake…
Michael Bailey, author of Rocket: A history of a pioneering locomotive, talks about the engineering that set Rocket apart from its rivals.
To celebrate the Rainhill Trials, let’s take a look at how the names of the engines captured the spirit of the era, and how what you call something continues to shape how we think of the past and the future.