Let’s be clear: This isn’t a museum of science; it would be more accurate to call the Putnam Gallery at Harvard University a museum about science, and in fact it’s a project not of Harvard’s extensive science and research departments but of its History of Science department.
As a veteran visitor to science museums, I found the shifted focus fascinating—the message is not about scientific discoveries, but about how, over a nearly 400-year stretch, the university has taught about science, thought about its role in science, and the tools it has collected along the way.
In the very beginning, when Harvard was the only source of ‘higher education’ in the Massachusetts colony, it spent a lot of effort on what was needed for success: navigation, surveying and measuring time, related fields needed to develop the land and ship its products.
Those disciplines necessarily connect to observing the seas, skies and beyond; they’re the foundation of the idea of Harvard and others as ‘research universities.’ The first scientific instrument the college acquired was a telescope, given by John Winthrop, Jr, the Governor of Connecticut. It was used by tutor Thomas Brattle to make observations that became part of Newton’s Principia.
Intricate devices like this 1770s Grand Orrery helped students and faculty understand the universe and its motions. The middle photo shows the moving model of the planets and other bodies; below that, a view of the incredibly intricate hand-made mechanism that kept it moving. The figures around the rim are leading scientists Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin as well as Massachusetts Governor John Bowdoin. The mechanism was made by Boston artisan Joseph Pope; the figures were cast by Paul Revere.
Harvard’s astronomical observations in the early days included an expedition by professors and students to observe a Transit of Venus in 1761. Despite the fact that Britain and France were at war in North America and Europe, the expedition sailed to French-ruled Newfoundland to make the observations, the only ones made in North America.
Other antique instruments demonstrate how science and understanding over time. The device below was built to generate electrical force; it was believed that the process required a difference in air pressure when the globe was rubbed by a moving pad. That was in 1766; by the time the second machine was built in the early 1800s using a flat plate it had been discovered that air pressure had nothing to do with it.
The ‘Magic Lantern.’ ancestor of our projectors, needed a chimney to dissipate the heat from the burning lamp within.
Politics and religion affected the teaching of science as well; this universe model was used by Professor John Winthrop to teach astronomy and “true piety and Godliness.” He told students that God had arranged the paths of comets to avoid collisions—except when God saw fit to aim one at sinners.
Despite that religious tinge, in his 40 years heading science at Harvard, Winthrop collected some of the earliest accurate weather and climate data, and by applying mathematical computations to earthquake activity became the founder of seismology. He was also, perhaps, a master of the ‘teachable moment’—when Harvard Hall burned down in 1764, a fire engine was bought from London, and Winthrop had a model made to teach the physics of its operation to his students.
The collection on display includes all manner of devices to demonstrate different forces of nature, whether acoustic, mechanical or electrical. So many, in fact, that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of what device belongs to which explanatory label in the crowded space.
Some seem only vaguely related to scientific teaching and research, but even the one below, essentially a parlor trick, contributed to wider awareness of science, especially electricity. It’s one of a number of devices that itinerant showmen carried from town to town creating spectacles with sparks, shocks and more.
This little 1769 house was probably pretty amusing, too, but it had a serious purpose: demonstrating lightning rod effectiveness. Called a ‘thunder house,’ it was fitted with a gunpowder charge inside. When it was grounded with a lightning rod and struck with a charge, nothing happened, but without the rod, the charge would blow open the hinged panels. After a College building was damaged by lighting in 1768, a professor was assigned to install and maintain lightning rods all over the college.
We’re familiar in our day with universities doing research and providing services on government contracts, but the Harvard collection has the tools of an unusual early version: For several years, Harvard sold time to the railroads. After several train wrecks, including a major one in 1853 that were caused by a lack of coordinated time between towns, trains, and stations, the railroads of New England established a system of standard time. Conductors and stationmasters were charged with coordinating with each other, but the time came from Harvard.
The railroads chose the Harvard Observatory as the authoritative source of time, and the Observatory became the first in the world to distribute time based on clock beats sent out over telegraph wires, the internet of the day. For the first twenty years of the arrangement, no fee was charged, but from 1872 to 1892, when the responsibility for time shifted to the Naval Observatory in Washington, Harvard sold time.
Of course, physics, astronomy and other physical sciences weren’t all that Harvard scientists and students worked on; although the gallery gives it less emphasis, there are exhibits of biology models and instruments as well, ranging from physical models of body systems to Harvard’s pioneering work in nuclear medicine and proton beam therapy.
It’s all 20th century at the back of the gallery, with exhibits that show advances in physics in the 1930s and beyond, and also hint at the sort of classified research Harvard labs did during World War II and beyond.
Some of the once-secret devices from the 1940s…
Impressively displayed at the farthest end of the gallery is the control system from Harvard’s cyclotron. It could stand in for a control room in for many movies I’ve seen, from war to suspense to science fiction or even disaster movies.
But the effect is somewhat diminished by the rack of equipment at the left, reminding us that not all the science is big science, or university science. It contains what may still be familiar to many of us, and was my own first introduction to computing: a Commodore 64 computer, with 1541 disc drive and a Panasonic dot-matrix printer!
Nuts and Bolts
The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments is only a small corner of the museums operated by Harvard, many of which have free admission, including all five of its art museums. For details, check the University’s museum website.
Fascinating! It looks like a very interesting collection.
I was puzzled by the reference (in the context of Harvard Hall burning down in 1764) to a fire engine being brought in from London. It would have been a bit late to be of any use – or was it stationed on campus to tackle any future disasters?
It was definitely a post-fire purchase, a replacement for bucket brigades.