jere7my | The Museum of the History of Science (Reply)

Thursday, July 2 - Florence

You're looking at a particularly tricky armillary sphere. Everything from the circular degree markings inward is a reflection in a spherical mirror, distorting the skewed cuboid framework around it into a perfect image of circular rings. (You can see some of the backwards numbers painted on the frame.) The actual corners are smoothed into curves, and the "cubical" joins between the rings are just trompe-l'oeil paintings on flat wood. The whole thing rotates on its axis around the mirror, to permit measurements of the reflected night sky.

And that's us, in the Museum of the History of Science! Alas, it was an abbreviated experience. We knew we were going to see only part of the collection, due to ongoing renovations, but it wasn't until I started looking at the website that I saw what a wealth of treasures were denied to us. Not only the famous stuff, which we knew was on tour — Galileo's telescope, and his middle finger — but orreries and clocks and prismatic lenses and what-all. I'm glad we went (and we did get an admission discount), but I'd like to go back to see the other three-quarters of the collection.

Even so, there were plenty of goodies to capture.

There was an intriguing sundial in front, topped with a glass sphere. With the sun behind it, it looks a bit like a certain fully operational battle station. Here it is actually telling time (one hour off for daylight savings):

A quadrant. Check out the superfluous magic square, just 'cause!

The so-called "Galileo's" astrolabe, which he did in fact use, but not much. There were bunches and bunches of astrolabes on display:

A rather gorgeous and simple ivory sundial.

Pinhole spectacles, for those who couldn't afford glass lenses.

An adorable 19th-century model of magnetic field lines.

The 18th-century version of those little magnetic Scottie dogs.

This was a demonstration of the power of lightning rods. A little bit of gunpowder was placed in the central reservoir, then a spark touched to the brass ball. If the path to ground was interrupted, the gunpowder blew the walls down!

A nocturnal is a device for telling time at night. You sight the North Star through the hole in the middle, then rotate the arm until it points at a certain reference star. I love how intricate they are. The first one has a built-in compass.

A large, highly detailed, and rather unusual world map. It's a copy of a mid-15th-century original.

Unsurprisingly, there were some beautiful old telescopes there. This is a mount for Giovanni Battista Amici's "Amici II" objective, from the early 19th century.

For the whole set, go here. The website (which is fabulous) has individual pages for most of the items in their collection, and I linked most of my Flickr pictrs to their official pages, if you find yourself wanting more info about anything.