heath: Museums

Here are some more pictures from the Ashmolean's History of Science collection. Some of their stuff just seems really odd and I have a feeling it dates to the time when to practice 'science' often meant one was a gentleman of liesure who collected exotic knicknacks.

Like a dried puffer fish...

or scary metal prostheses.

Science!

There was some wonderful stained glass there as well.

In commemeration of Christopher Wren, who may have designed the Old Ashmolean building where this picture was taken, and certainly designed its neighbors, in addition to designing St Pauls in London, founding the Royal Society for Science and being Professor of astronomy at Oxford.

Here's the view of Broad Street from the Ashmolean. That's Blackwell's Bookshop, where I've been trying to track down cheap used books.

And speaking of books, one of my courses is starting next week and I've got some reading to do. And since I think all the running around in the damp has given me a bit of a cold, I think I might try to spend most of today taking it easy since I've already found a used volume of Plato that has 'Apology,' 'Phaedo,' and 'Crito,' everything I need for my first meeting at New College. An afternoon inside drinking some good tea and reading about the death of Socrates aught to cure anybody.

Oh, and I won't forget to add another post about the stuff I did yesterday as well.

I had planed to go the Ashmolean's Museum of Art and Archaeology yesterday but it was closed due to the nearby St. Giles Fair, which is pretty much like an average American street festival, with the exception of the the jarring incongruities of Tilt-a-Whirls and martyr's monuments.

So instead I went the Ashmolean's Museum of the History Science, which also happens to be where Stuart is trying to get me in to do some research for my prehistory of the cinema/archaeology of vision tutorial. But I'm not mentioning that again because I'm not going to jinx it.

Anyway, they had an amazing collection of Renaissance and Enlightenment era optical devices and some really impressive early photographic and cinematic artifacts. Sorry if some of the pictures are badly focused, you can't use a flash in the Museum. I just hope you can appreciate the irony of the fact that the photos couldn't be focused due to the bad light in the physical optics gallery.

This is Lawrence of Arabia's camera.

Here is Lewis Carol's ( the Oxonian of 'Alice in Wonderland' fame) camera. The museum has delicately avoided mentioning all the children whom Carol had pose before this camera in various states of undress. He was a perv.

This one is a very early camera that I think still used Daguerre's photographic process.

A stereoscope, it's like Victorian 3D glasses.

Here is a late 19th century magic lantern, a forerunner of the film projector. The Victorians would put panes of glass intricately painted with different scenes and figure into the magic lantern and project them into darkened rooms. How cool would it be to get to see some! I've never seen one but this passage, here, from 'Swann's Way' really helps to conjure their spectral presence. See paragraphs 11-13. C'est supercool!

These are some early motion picture cameras.

They also had a camera obscura--something else I'd only read about--which could actually be used! The name is Latin for 'dark chamber,' it's basically a way to project an image of a landscape or other light source onto a surface. Aristotle used a primitive form of the principle to watch an eclipse, the old pinhole in a dixie cup from grade school. This is a more advanced application of the same idea, using lenses and mirrors. To see the image, you poke your head under the sheet.