European Collections of Scientific Instruments 1550-1750

Collections of scientific instruments originated as part of Renaissance collections of 'naturalia' and 'artificialia'. Surveying and astronomical instruments were common in such collections, their role being to impress visitors by displaying the power that a ruler acquired through the control of nature. This book offers selected studies of notable European collections of scientific instruments from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. These studies also present the work of important instrument makers of the time, and their relations with patrons and rulers. A final section focuses on the role of modern museums and collectors in saving this scientific heritage from dispersal. The result is a contemporary perspective on the formation of the most important museums of the history of science.

Contributors include: Paolo Brenni, Filippo Camerota, Gloria Clifton, Wolfram Dolz, Sven Dupré, Karsten Gaulke, Sven Hauschke, Michael Korey, Mara Miniati, Tatiana M. Moisseeva, Peter Plaßmeyer, Klaus Schillinger, Giorgio Strano, Koenraad Van Cleempoel, and Ewa Wyka.

Scientific Instruments and Collections, 1

Giorgio Strano, Ph.D. (2003) in History of Science, University of Florence, is Curator of the Collections at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence. He has published extensively on the history of astronomy, including Galileo’s Telescope (2008).

Stephen Johnston, Ph.D. (1994) in History of Science, University of Cambridge, is Assistant Keeper at the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford. His publications focus on instruments and practical mathematics from the sixteenth to the ninetheenth centuries.

Mara Miniati, Curator emeritus at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence, has authored more than one hundred publications. In March 1993, she was awarded the Paul Bunge Prize, an international award for historians of scientific instruments.

Alison Morrison-Low, D. Phil (2000) in Economic History with Physics, University of York, Principal Curator of Science at National Museums Scotland since 1980. Her recent publications explore the English instrument trade, for which she won the 2008 Paul Bunge Prize.