Failed Historical Scientific Instruments

Sara J. Schechner is David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments and Lecturer on History of Science at Harvard University. She serves on the Editorial Board for the Scientific Instrument Commission’s series, Scientific Instruments and Collections.Sofia Talas is the Curator of the Giovanni Poleni Museum, at the University of Padua.

• List of IllustrationsContributorsIntroduction: Failed Historical Scientific InstrumentsSara J. Schechner and Sofia Talas1. An Archive of Failed Inventions: The Museum of the Admiralty Compass Observatory Richard Dunn2. The Diffusion Hygrometer: A Commercial FailureJean-François Loude3. “Extremely Poor”: An Equatorial Mount that Failed Johan Kärnfelt4. A Telescope’s Lack of Fortune: The Newall TelescopePanagiotis Lazos and George N. Vlahakis5. Not All Bad: Rehabilitating Phrenology in MuseumsTacye Phillipson6. Finding Way at Sea – Alternatives to the Log-Line and Sand Glass. The British Experience in the Hanoverian Era: Conservative Navigational Practice or Technological Failure?D.J. Bryden7. The Transmission X-Ray Microscope: Super Microscope for Biology or Yet Another Niche Instrument?Andreas Junk8. From Complex to Simple: The Example of Qibla-IndicatorsRazieh S. Mousavi9. Pedro Nunes, Tycho Brahe, and Orazio Borgondio: Two Failed Schemes to Read Angular Scales? Luís Tirapicos10. Thomas Young’s Eriometer: Wrong Time, Wrong Inventor, Wrong Users? Michelle Mercier11. Black and White Images in a Grey Area of Failure: The Photo-Theodolite at the Royal Geographical Society in the 1920s Jane Wess12. A Failure, an Icon or Beyond: The Cloud Chamber of the University of Padua Sofia Talas and Giulio Peruzzi13. Failures, an Instrument Maker’s Perspective Nicolàs de HolsterIndex