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CHICAGO – In the 90 years since the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry opened in late 1933, the facility has welcomed more than 190 million people.
These visitors were informed and entertained through various exhibitions, both permanent and temporary, basically faithful to science and technology.
The temporary exhibitions include classics of the moment, such as a practical report focused on science and the generation of the James Bond films.
And those permanent exhibits include longtime favorites such as the World War II-era life-size German submarine, U-505; the coal mine; Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle, an elaborate dollhouse created by the silent film star of the same name; and the Bathrough Chick Hatchery.
But few are familiar with the Museum of Science and Industry’s exclusive permanent collection.
“The Museum of Science and Industry has a giant, tranquil collection of scientific and commercial artifacts and technology, and they’ve been collecting it since 1929, several years before the museum opened,” said Voula Saridakis, curator at MSI. And most of the items in the collection date from the mid-19th century to the present day. When they were making the plans for the museum, they knew they would need those items for the museum, even before it opened in 1933.
In fact, some 30,000 artifacts are part of this never-before-seen permanent collection. Many of those items graced the main floors of the Museum of Science and Industry at one time or another. But now it’s the scenes, in an air-conditioned basement of the magnificent 130-year-old building, which was originally the Palace of Fine Arts, built for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
Saridakis recently took a team from ABC7 Chicago into the bowels of the museum to display some of those rarely noticed treasures.
They come with amazing artifacts, such as a huge hollowed-out tree trunk that is at least 12 feet long. But although it looks like a tree trunk, it is a piece of sewer pipe used in London in the 17th century. century, before steel was commonly used for infrastructure.
“It’s a gift from the British government and it’s probably the oldest artifact in our collection,” Saridakis said.
Other notable and varied artifacts preserved in the museum’s basement include a piece of graphite from the world’s first nuclear reactor, in the basement of the now-demolished Stagg Field on the campus of the University of Chicago; a huge horse-drawn hydraulic machine used to extinguish fires in the late 19th century; and a device used to generate static electricity, used by doctors in the early 20th century.
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“It all depends on this evolution of concepts in terms of generation and innovation,” Saridakis said. “We have more than 30,000 artifacts in our collections, and they cover a wide diversity of other topics, from communications to clinical devices to spacecraft, so all of them are very interesting. “of the past. “
Perhaps the strangest artifact is an object called “The Violet Ray,” an ancient medical device from the early 20th century, which was used for electrotherapy.
“It’s an example of quack medicine,” Saridakis said. And the explanation for why it’s called Violet Ray is because it emits purple rays. And that was meant to create those weak electrical currents that were meant to increase the flow in the body, and they were meant to solve everything from acne to warts, abscesses, acne, alopecia, anemia, everything from A to Z. “
One of the dominant features of this new collection is the sending of the past. There are vintage motorcycles from corporations such as Henderson and Harley Davidson, dating back to the 1910s, as well as other desirable artifacts, such as an engine from the Spitfire, the World War II fighter plane, which was manufactured through Rolls-Royce.
“A lot of other people don’t realize that Rolls-Royce made aircraft engines and didn’t just make cars, especially in those days,” Saridakis said.
There is an explanation for why transportation is so represented in the collection.
“When the Museum of Science and Industry opened in 1933, the Century of Progress World’s Fair was taking place in Chicago (on the North Island),” Saridakis said. “So the founders of the museum courted the brands and the Americans who presented everything at the World’s Fair of the Century of Progress. And that’s where they were given the first hundred pieces that are part of the museum’s permanent collection. “
Later this year, the Museum of Science and Industry will launch an online book dedicated to those never-before-seen treasures from the institution’s permanent collection.
“This will be the first time we will put our artifacts online,” Saridakis said. “Visitors will be able to access the website, click on the collections page, and see the hundreds, if not thousands, of artifacts. we’ve stored here. “
A date has not yet been set for the launch of this page, but Saridakis said the concept of making this collection more available to the public stems from a preference for teaching about our technological past.
“The idea is to take a look at those artifacts, so we can perceive how the generation has evolved since the 19th century,” he said.
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