
Forty Years of Scientific Instrument Studies
The Scientific Instrument Commission
Brill (Publisher)
Published on 28. August 2025
Book
Hardback
328 pages
978-90-04-73757-0 (ISBN)
Description
Since 1981, the Scientific Instrument Commission has provided a forum for annual international discussion of topics close to the hearts of those caring for and researching historic scientific instruments. During these years, increasing professionalisation of curatorship and deepened engagement by historians have led to important changes in these roles.
This volume is a cornucopia illustrating how instrument studies have changed and flourished over the past forty years. Four chapters review the work of the Scientific Instrument Commission by decade. The remaining chapters consider the historiography of instrument studies, the cataloguing of collections, historic instruments in exhibitions and educational settings, national trends, and the impact of new media. This book includes twenty smaller, in-depth "Fingerposts", or colourfully illustrated vignettes, presenting significant artefacts selected to span the spread of historical instrumentation through time and geography. They demonstrate the variety of historical questions and thematic analyses that can be explored through close inspection of particular scientific instruments.
Contributors are R.G.W. Anderson, Sara J. Schechner, Richard L. Kremer, David Pantalony, Boris Jardine, A.D. Morrison-Low, Giorgio Strano, Jean-Francois Gauvin, Sofia Talas, Pedro Raposo, and Floor Koeleman.
This volume is a cornucopia illustrating how instrument studies have changed and flourished over the past forty years. Four chapters review the work of the Scientific Instrument Commission by decade. The remaining chapters consider the historiography of instrument studies, the cataloguing of collections, historic instruments in exhibitions and educational settings, national trends, and the impact of new media. This book includes twenty smaller, in-depth "Fingerposts", or colourfully illustrated vignettes, presenting significant artefacts selected to span the spread of historical instrumentation through time and geography. They demonstrate the variety of historical questions and thematic analyses that can be explored through close inspection of particular scientific instruments.
Contributors are R.G.W. Anderson, Sara J. Schechner, Richard L. Kremer, David Pantalony, Boris Jardine, A.D. Morrison-Low, Giorgio Strano, Jean-Francois Gauvin, Sofia Talas, Pedro Raposo, and Floor Koeleman.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
676 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-73757-0 (9789004737570)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Sara J. Schechner, Ph.D. (1988), Harvard University, is Curator Emerita of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University, retiring in 2024 after twenty-four years of service. She has been Secretary of the Scientific Instrument Commission (2003-2013) and currently serves on the Editorial Board for the Scientific Instrument Commission's series Scientific Instruments and Collections (SICo). She is the author of Time of Our Lives: Sundials of the Adler Planetarium (2019), co-author of Tangible Things: Making History through Objects (2015), and co-editor of Failed Historical Scientific Instruments (2024).
Richard L. Kremer, Ph.D. (1984), Harvard University, is Professor Emeritus of History at Dartmouth College, where he taught history of science and curated the institution's collection of historic scientific instruments. He served as President of the Scientific Instrument Commission from 2018-2021, co-edited Instruments on Display (2014), co-authored Study, Measure, Experiment: Stories of Instruments at Dartmouth College (2005), and has published extensively on medieval astronomical instruments and tables.
Richard L. Kremer, Ph.D. (1984), Harvard University, is Professor Emeritus of History at Dartmouth College, where he taught history of science and curated the institution's collection of historic scientific instruments. He served as President of the Scientific Instrument Commission from 2018-2021, co-edited Instruments on Display (2014), co-authored Study, Measure, Experiment: Stories of Instruments at Dartmouth College (2005), and has published extensively on medieval astronomical instruments and tables.
Content
Figures and Tables?XI
Notes on Contributors?XV
Introduction: Forty Years of Scientific Instrument Studies
?Sara J. Schechner and Richard L. Kremer
Chapters
1 The 1980s
?Robert G.W. Anderson
2 The Scientific Instrument Commission in the 1990s
?Sara J. Schechner
3 The Scientific Instrument Commission in Its Third Decade, 2000-2009
?Richard L. Kremer
4 One Object, Many Worlds: the Scientific Instrument Commission in the 2010s
?David Pantalony
5 Transactional Tales: Historiography and Scientific Instrument Studies
?Boris Jardine
6 Expansion, "Globalisation," and National Trends
?Sofia Talas
7 Forty Years of Cataloguing Historic Scientific Instruments
?A.D. Morrison-Low
8 Forty Years of Permanent and Temporary Exhibitions: a Curator's Meditation
?Giorgio Strano
Notes on Contributors?XV
Introduction: Forty Years of Scientific Instrument Studies
?Sara J. Schechner and Richard L. Kremer
Chapters
1 The 1980s
?Robert G.W. Anderson
2 The Scientific Instrument Commission in the 1990s
?Sara J. Schechner
3 The Scientific Instrument Commission in Its Third Decade, 2000-2009
?Richard L. Kremer
4 One Object, Many Worlds: the Scientific Instrument Commission in the 2010s
?David Pantalony
5 Transactional Tales: Historiography and Scientific Instrument Studies
?Boris Jardine
6 Expansion, "Globalisation," and National Trends
?Sofia Talas
7 Forty Years of Cataloguing Historic Scientific Instruments
?A.D. Morrison-Low
8 Forty Years of Permanent and Temporary Exhibitions: a Curator's Meditation
?Giorgio Strano