International Workshop on Historical Scientific Instruments in Universities; June 21-24, 2007; Oxford, MS

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Summary: International Workshop on Historic Scientific Instrument Collections in UniversitiesThis proposal seeks partial support for an international workshop to bring together working scientistsin universities and colleges with historians of science, museum curators, and archivists. The workshop isa follow-on to the international conference on Scientific Instrument Collections in Universities (SICU)held at Dartmouth College in June 2004. SICU was an ambitious first attempt by this nascent communityto find hidden instrument collections and to assemble a wide spectrum of people with common interestsin formalizing university collections. As a first step, SICU was successful in bringing to light someimportant collections and in organizing an interested group of more than 80 international scholars.However, much remains to be done to effectively promote interactions between these scholars andscientists and curators involved with university collections.The aim of the proposed workshop is to take the next steps in the process of getting scientists andhistorians of science to communicate and collaborate on conducting research and education based onhistorical scientific instruments. Specifically, three main needs for an intensive gathering of interestedpractitioners have been identified: access, security, and utilization of collections. The scientificcommunity needs to be more involved in the effort, as they have the background and understanding of thescience concepts that many of these collections were created to teach. There are many more collectionsof varying dates that have not yet become accessible to the scholarly community, and often, onlyuniversity scientists know about these collections. Security of collections involves developing anunderstanding of their value and a practical resource base for their proper care. Effective utilization ofthese instruments for scholarship, science education, and public outreach requires a broad effort ofawareness and an accessible reference guide to their intended purposes. Meeting these three needs is theoverarching goal of this workshop.The intellectual merit of this project comes through the extension of the resource base for scholarsfocusing on the material culture of science beyond the major museum collections that have been used anddocumented for many years. The workshop will divulge the wealth of historically significant scientificequipment that may still exist in most major colleges and universities founded prior to the 1950's. Inaddition, a network of researchers will be developed that would jointly work to establish a context andbackground for any unknown instruments found in newly accessed collections and contributed byhistorians, curators, and scientists. Solutions and descriptions to these mysteries would be published inthe open literature.The broader impact of this project derives from the fact that participants will work cooperatively todevelop a community-wide compendium of scientific instrument collections online that would meet theneeds of scientists, historians of science, museum curators, and science educators. As conceived, thecompendium would include significant aspects of the instrument: science, history, inventor, instrumentmaker, references, videos, and demonstration contexts. It will also serve as a practical resource guide forstewards of these collections. Such a compendium will require interdisciplinary involvement andcollaboration between the science, history, education, and curatorial communities; the workshop formatwill be used to establish guidelines for the development of this resource. This compendium will have farreaching impacts for the history of science, science education, and public outreach through the increasedknowledge of, access to, and utilization of these significant university resources.The workshop will be held at the University of Mississippi, home to the Millington-BarnardCollection of 19th Century Natural Philosophy Demonstration Apparatus. This 500-piece collectionwas acquired by the University in 1852-1860 and narrowly escaped destruction during the Civil War.Pieces from the top instrument makers in the U.S., France, Germany, and England were used forinstruction in Physics and Astronomy for more than 150 years and are now exhibited in the UniversityMuseum. . Approximately 100 participants are anticipated at the workshop from outside the University of Mississippi.