Topical Tens: 26th June: The Science Museum

Monday 19 June 2017

26th June: The Science Museum

On this date in 1909, the Science Museum in London was established.

The Science Museum started off as part of South Kensington Museum, founded in 1885. The South Kensington Museum included surplus items from the Great Exhibition and items from the Museum of Patents. The collection was eventually split into the Art Museum (which became the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the Science Museum.
The Science Museum is one of London's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors a year.
The museum's collection of over 300,000 items includes Stephenson's Rocket, Puffing Billy (the oldest surviving steam locomotive), the first jet engine, a reconstruction of Francis Crick and James Watson's model of DNA, an example of a Newcomen steam engine, the worlds first steam engine, a working example of Charles Babbage's Difference engine and documentation of the first Typewriter.
It once had the Wright flyer, the world’s first heavier than air aircraft, because Orville Wright wanted to loan it to the Science Museum rather than give it to the Smithsonian. Eventually, the Science Museum had a replica made and gave the original to the Smithsonian in 1948.
The Museum is based in Brompton, and its original iron buildings were so ugly that they were named the ‘Brompton Boilers’.
The closest London Underground station is South Kensington; a subway leads from the station to the museum, and also to the Natural History Museum next door. At one time, there was a public corridor connecting the two museums but it has been closed off.
The Director at time of writing is Ian Blatchford.
The Science Museum benefits more schoolchildren than any other museum in the UK, thanks not school outings there and also the outreach programmes it runs. There are also occasional evenings where children and accompanying adults can spend the night in the museum, camping out among the exhibits and taking part in science based activities.
From the 1930s, there were plans to put a planetarium on the top floor, but it never happened because Madam Tussaud's beat them to it.
Among the films and TV shows filmed in the museum are The Ipcress File, the thriller starring Michael Caine, and the BBC TV version of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth.