All his life, Robert Stewart Whipple had his life linked to scientific instruments. At the beginning of his life, he started working for Kew, being an assistant, and then left to work as an assistant manager of the renowned instrument manufacturer L.P. Cassella. In 1898, he moved to Cambridge, where he became a personal assistant to Horace Darwin (youngest son of Charles Darwin), founder of the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. Later, he held positions as managing director of the company and, later, its president (Whipple Museum, 2020).
Photograph of the main room of the Whipple Museum (Photo taken by Hugo Mestre)
Whipple would also found learned societies and institutions, Founder-Fellow of the Institute of Physics, a Fellow of the Physical Society, he was also an enthusiastic collector of scientific instruments.
An exhibition was held in November 1944 in the East Room of the Old Schools where several scientific objects and rare books from Whipple's collection were officially presented to Cambridge University. The university had difficulty, due to the lack of space, in keeping these objects, therefore, they would be kept in several buildings, such as, for example, the basement of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Girton College, and two rooms in Corn Exchange Street. In 1959, the collection, which was growing, moved to the building where it would remain until today, the old Perse School hall. Between 1973 and 1975, in Perse Hall, a major restoration work was carried out (Whipple Museum, 2020).
A library was also created for the new Department of History and Philosophy of Science, at the center of this library's attention are the rare books donated by Whipple, publications on scientific instruments, from the medieval period to astronomical observations, as well as industrial technology of the 20th century. A collection also includes the prestigious work of Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles - in which he explains the theory of gravity, and Christian Huygens - Horologium Oscillatorium - in which the invention of the grandfather clock is detailed. Since then, the collection of rare books has grown to 3000 volumes. Also, the library develops a collection of teaching and research to meet the needs of the Department and the University. The Cambridge History of Science Lectures Committee and the Philosophical Society of Cambridge, the Museum and Library have an active role in teaching the history and philosophy of science, which was one of Robert Whipple's greatest wishes(Whipple Museum, 2020).
Charles Darwin's microscope at the Whipple Museum (Photo taken by Hugo Mestre)
The museum holds objects that date mainly from the 17th to the 19th century, particularly of English manufacture, although it also has objects from the medieval period, for example. Among them we find instruments of astronomy, navigation, surveying, drawing and calculating, sundials, mathematical instruments, and early electrical apparatus.
One of the most important objects that we find inside this museum is the Grand Orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system. Its cost would have been over a thousand pounds. It was manufactured before 1752 and has been calibrated for the Julian Calendar. It was utilized to teach basic astronomy of the solar system. The Grand Orrery was designed to give us a reasonable and accurate understanding of the positions and movements of the planets and their moons. The movement of the Grand Orrery is done through a crank that fits on a central axis. We were able to see Saturn, the outermost planet, with its ring and its five satellites discovered by Huygens and Cassini between 1655 and 1684, but we were unable to see Uranus, which was not known to exist until 1781 (Bryden, 1978).
Grand Orrery found at the Whipple Museum (Photo taken by Hugo Mestre)
Finally, a short video about the Whipple Museum...
Reference List:
Bryden, D., 1978. Selected Exhibits In The Whipple Museum Of The History Of Science. 1st ed. Cambridge: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, p.3.
Whipple Museum Celebrates 75th Anniversary With Special Exhibition. 2019. [youtube] Directed by That's West Anglia. Cambridge.
Whipple Museum, 2020. History Of The Building | Whipple Museum. [online] Whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk. Available at: <https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/about-us/history-building> [Accessed 6 July 2020].
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