Objects and Investigations, to Celebrate the 75th Anniversary of R. S. Whipple's Gift to the University of Cambridge.

Edited by Joshua Nall, Liba Taub and Frances Willmoth.

Published by Cambridge University Press 2019. 334 pp with 62 illustrations. ISBN 9781108498272. Price £35.00.

The diverse objects of The Whipple Museum of the History of Science's internationally renowned collection are brought into sharp relief by a number of highly regarded historians of science in fourteen essays. Each chapter focuses on a specific instrument or group of objects, ranging from an English medieval astrolabe to a modern agricultural 'seed source indicator' to a curious collection of plaster chicken heads. The contributors employ a range of historiographical and methodological approaches to demonstrate the various ways in which the material culture of science can be researched and understood. The essays show how the study of scientific objects - including instruments and models - offers a window into cultures of scientific practice not afforded by textual sources alone.

This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Tony Freeth, 2008, 36pp

A brief history of research on the Antikythera Mechanism, written to accompany the exhibition which ran from July 31st - December 19th 2008 in the Whipple Museum. Tony Freeth, one of the team known as the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project [http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr] (AMRP), gives a participant's account of conducting research into this extraordinary ancient Greek astronomical calculating machine.

The Mechanism was designed to calculate complex cycles of mathematical astronomy, including the movements of the sun, moon and planets. However, latest research by the AMRP reveals that it also contained a sporting calendar, with a dial showing the four-year cycle of ancient Greek athletic games, including the Olympic Games.

The Whipple Museum of the History of Science: Instruments and interpretations, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of R.S. Whipple's gift to the University of Cambridge

Liba Taub and Frances Willmoth (eds.), 2006, 512pp

The Whipple Museum in Cambridge contains one of the most important existing collections in the history and philosophy of science and has played a key role in teaching and research within those subjects. Founded in 1944 with funding from Robert Stewart Whipple, formerly of the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, the Museum aims to preserve the material culture of science through its collections, to document and provide access to those collections, and to interpret and research the material culture and associated practices of past science.

This volume brings together 23 essays and 85 illustrations which chart the Museum's history; examine its role and influence within the University of Cambridge and the study of the subject more widely; and focus on a range of particular scientific instruments in the collection, drawing out their broader historical significance and associations.

Anke Timmermann, Nick Jardine and Debby Banham (eds.), 2006, 48pp

The Cambridge Latin Therapy Group's third booklet, discussing the different uses of the human body as an instrument in writings by the venerable Bede, Johannes Kepler, Robert Fludd, and the anonymous writers of a bestiary and lecture notes from sixteenth-century Vienna. The reader will encounter a maiden and a unicorn, Saint Anastasius, a dismembered hand and a protective medalet, but also be informed about Fludd's idea of the body as a monochord and Kepler's use of bodily imagery in his conception of the world and the cosmos. In itself an instrument of understanding, this publication presents texts and translations as well as notes and theories.

Catherine Eagleton and Patrick Boner (eds.), 2004, 65pp

A second booklet by the Cambridge Latin Therapy Group on problematic instrument texts, Instruments of Mystery tells how the group arrived at translations of three mysterious sources: a letter from Tycho Brahe ambiguously describing a planetary instrument that he had seen; a manuscript about a cunning device for uprooting a mandrake, without you or your dog being struck dead by its fearsome scream; and an arcane proposal for transmitting coded messages faster than the speed of time. Instruments of Mystery reflects on the status of these elusive instruments and on the ways in which translators can come to terms with the obscurities of such enigmatic, wondrous and inscrutable texts.

Soraya de Chadarevian and Harmke Kamminga, 2002, 76pp

Images of the double helix are everywhere: in scientific publications and the media, in business advertisements, as a design for consumer goods, and in works of art. This catalogue presents a selection of the material included in the recent exhibition Representations of the Double Helix. With colour illustrations throughout, it follows the image of the double helix from its first appearances in scientific papers to its uses as a cultural icon.

Nick Hopwood, 2002, 216pp, including 32pp colour and 100 halftones

Embryos in Wax highlights the role of 3-D models in creating the images of embryos that we see today on our computer and television screens. It is about the extraordinary objects that in the 19th and early 20th centuries Adolf and Friedrich Ziegler cast for universities and museums around the world. A lavishly illustrated history, this is also a comprehensive guide to the finest embryological models.

Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 1998, 48pp

Despite the sleepy reputation of 18th-century Cambridge, many colleges were engaged in building facilities for astronomical research. From the observatory at Trinity College to the University Observatory in the early 19th century, Cambridge was never inactive. This booklet accompanies the exhibition mounted in the Whipple Museum to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the closing of Trinity Observatory in 1797.

J.A. Bennett, R. Brain, S. Schaffer, H.O. Sibum, R. Staley, 1994, 101pp

Every age tries to define its future. 1900: The New Age takes you back to the International Exhibition held in Paris in 1900 to explore some visions of various imaginary 20th centuries, and how the past saw the future in its amazing and threatening present.

J.A. Bennett, R. Brain, K. Bycroft, S. Schaffer, H.O. Sibum, R. Staley, 1993, 110pp

The exhibition explores how the combination of the Laboratory and the Exhibitions staged in European cities between the 1850s and 1900 made it seem that the world could be dominated by the products of physics.

Robert Brain, 1993, 198pp

This original anthology assembles materials culled from exhibition literature from the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London to the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900

J.A. Bennett, 1992, 64pp

Selected highlights of instruments acquired by the Whipple Museum between 1980 and 1990. Chosen and described by Dr Jim Bennett, curator of the Museum from 1978 to 1994.

David J. Bryden, 1988, 108pp

A comprehensive guide to the sundials and related instruments housed within the Whipple Museum.

Kenneth Lyall, 1991, 136pp

A comprehensive guide to the electrical and magnetic instruments housed within the Whipple Museum.

J.A. Bennett, 1989, 35pp

A gallery full of French instruments, demonstrating the shift that took place between the 18th and 19th centuries, with Lenoir at the pivotal epoch of the French Revolution. A record of an exhibition in the Whipple Museum.

From Pleasure and Profit to Science and Security: Etiene Lenoir and the transformation of precision instrument-making in France 1760-1830

A.J. Turner, 1989, 107pp

A first sketch of the life of Etienne Lenoir and of the radical changes which occurred in French instrument making between 1780 and 1830. This book accompanies the exhibition 'Le Citoyen Lenoir' at the Whipple Museum which marked the bicentenary of the French Revolution.

Penelope Gouk, 1988, 144pp

A comprehensive and inter-disciplinary study of the ivory diptych dials produced in Nuremburg in the period 1500-1700. This book places the dials in the cultural context in which they were manufactured and marketed. This extensively illustrated publication includes a catalogue of the exhibition of the same name.

D. Bryden, 1978, 17pp

Selected highlights of instruments on display in the Whipple Museum, chosen and described by David Bryden, curator of the Whipple Museum from 1970 to 1978.

A 50th Anniversary Exhibition at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science
J.A. Bennett and D. Bertoloni Meli, 1994, 148pp

An illustrated catalogue produced to coincide with the Museum's 50th anniversary exhibition. Utilising books from the Whipple collection, it deals not only with bibliographical issues and with practical and technical aspects of the astronomy of the time, but also with such things as dedicatory letters, as a reminder of the importance of patronage in astronomical careers of the period.

J.A. Bennett, 1983, 22pp

This illustrated booklet, published to accompany an exhibition of the same name, provides an account of the medals awarded to 'Class X: Philosophical Instruments' at the Great Exhibition, Crystal Palace, 1851.

Cambridge Group for the History of Natural History and the Environmental Sciences, Editors: H. Macdonald, F. Reid, 2008, 120pp

Containing the records and recipes of the Cabinet of Natural History.

A collection of poems, essays and illustrations inspired by objects in the Whipple Museum’s collection. Contributors : Kelley Swain, Joseph Crawford, Lesley Saunders, Cassie Herschel-Shorland, Caitlin Wylie and Badaude. Foreword by Liba Taub, Director & Curator of The Whipple Museum.

Year of publication : 2012
ISBN : 9780906271278.
Size : 20 x 13.5 x 0.5 cm. 96pp.

Jennifer Rampling, Debby Banham and Nick Jardine (eds). 2010 46pp.

Latin texts are often packed with pitfalls : a risk well known to the Cambridge Latin Therapy Group, which here presents its fourth collection of translations. The theme is catastrophe, and how to avoid it. Readers should be warned that they will encounter the disastrous and drunken antics of fifteenth-century students, the machinations of fraudulent alchemists, the causes of monsters, and a mysterious and sinister medical instrument.

Beyond these perils, they will face a host of misleading 'false friends' :
the tricks and traps of the Latin language itself. Together, these contributions chart the Group's efforts to wrest sense and delight from the teeth of its medieval and early modern sources.

A Survey of the Networks Bringing a Knowledge of Optical Glass-Working to the London Trade, 1500 - 1800

Anita McConnell, edited by Jenny Bulstrode, published by The Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 2016, 166 pp

ISBN - 13: 9780906271-28-5
ISBN - 10: 0906271-28-2

An outstanding work of scholarship on the history of optical glass-making, also including illustrations of objects in the Museum's collection as well as from the numerous publications referred to in Anita's text and held in the Whipple Library's rare book collection.