4.3 Integration of new Acquisitions into Teaching and Research in the Mind and Life Sciences

In all cases, we would hope to acquire, not only the instruments themselves, but illustrative photographs of how they were used at the time, manuals, textbook descriptions of use, and key papers of innovators (that could be housed in the archives of the Countway Library or elsewhere). We have reason to believe that there are universities that still possess specific and relevant material of this sort, but lack the resources and space of Harvard to make proper use of it. These other universities or laboratories might be willing to donate, or sell what they have to the Harvard collection. For example, the original papers, drawings and possibly equipment of Hans Berger, discoverer of the EEG, are currently languishing in a basement at the University of Freiburg, Germany; and would be a wonderful prospect to pursue.

Anne Harrington has already proposed developing a new course within FAS entitled "Imag(in)ing the Brain" that would aim to make consistent use of the material culture of the brain sciences, and hence would offer one reliable and active venue for integrating instruments of this sort into undergraduate teaching. We similarly anticipate further developing advanced undergraduate and graduate-Ievel seminars in the life sciences that would involve significant hands-on work with the instruments outlined above, particularly in the form of reconstructing exemplary experiments (e.g., demonstrating ways in which the metabolic pathways were determined in the mid-century decades).

Everett Mendelsohn already integrates the instrumental components of experimentation in his seminars on 19th- and 20-century life sciences. In addition, the arrival of a new junior faculty member in our Department, Robert Brain, opens up rich new opportunities to integrate the extant psychology collection into research and teaching in the history of science at Harvard. Aspects of Brain's work concern the transfer of chronographs, chronoscopes, ergographs, dynamometers and other such instruments from physics and physiology into the new "brass instrument" psychology championed at Harvard especially by Hugo Muensterberg. Several specific episodes are of special interest, including the early work on forensic lie-detection with the sphygmograph and polygraph, the use of similar registration techniques in industrial settings, and the relation between these time-motion instruments and the work on the psychology of the cinema.

While at Harvard, Brain plans to teach a course on the rise of the laboratory ca 1850-1920 that would similarly trace the rise of the material culture of psychology, exploring its links with physics and biomedical disciplines, the formation of laboratory problems out of the tacit practical and skill problems of research, etc. He has considerable experience with mounting exhibitions himself, and would also be interesting in working with students to develop special exhibitions in themes revolving around his particular expertise.

5. Modern Physical Science
5.1 Current Collection

Our current physics collection from the 19th- and 20th-centuries includes a strong representative sample of some of the guiding instruments, both of research and of pedagogy .For example, in optics we have an excellent set of optical benches, heliostats, prisms, diffraction gratings, spectrographs; in acoustics (a Harvard strength near the turn of the century) we have demonstration devices, early photographs, absorption materials; in heat there are steam engines and other demonstration devices; and in vacuum technology, there is a myriad of vacuum pumps and associated demonstration apparatuses from the 18th-, 19th- and 20th-centuries).

Given the depth and variety of scientific expansion in the 20th-century , it is not surprising that the collection becomes (relatively) spottier. Most important is the collection of radios (from some of the earliest through the transistor), vacuum tubes ( one of the world's best collections ranging from early radio to powerful klystron tubes), and radar ( drawn from the MIT Rad Lab and the Harvard Anti-Radar Laboratory).. Under the excellent guidance of the radio and radar group, this subcollection has gradually become one of the better documented of the various sectors.

5.2 Future Collection

One of the central areas of work represented in postwar physics at Harvard has been the prosecution of cosmic-ray, nuclear, and then particle physics. In cosmic-ray physics, we recently located, for example, Curry Street's cloud chamber used in the discovery of the muon. For postwar physics the inevitable problem of scale arises, and here a certain amount of ingenuity is required. Resting within the walls of HEPL, for example, are large portions of the device used at Brookhaven in the famous two-neutrino experiment by Schwarz, Steinberger, and Lederman. While manifestly too large to be exhibited or even stored within the CHSI, it is possible to isolate pieces of the device which would show a great deal about the technical provenance of the various component parts of this radically new particle detector. Similarly, several components of the electronics associated with the Harvard-Penn-Wisconsin-Fermilab detector are still in existence (also at HEPL); these would be well worth preserving as the experiment was one of the two involved in the co-discovery of weak neutral currents, the first experimental support for unified field theories. More generally, the collection could pursue specific and targeted high-energy experiments conducted in part by Harvard-based groups, with the aim of preserving prototype detectors, sample data output, or specific and innovative components. The collection could also profitably coordinate information with the Harvard University Archives' collection of the Committee on Nuclear Physics and the Cambridge Electron Accelerator. It is yet to be determined what material objects, if any, survive from the early days of the cyclotron. Much was destroyed in the 1965 fire.

Outside of the high-energy physics arena, there are several areas well worth collecting (if documentation and instruments still survive). These include notebooks, correspondence and devices from the Pound-Rebke experiment, the first to show the gravitational red-shift of light, and Bloembergen' s work in nonlinear optics.

5.3 Teaching and the Collection

Galison teaches an advanced undergraduate/graduate course, "History and Philosophy of Experimentation," that addresses a wide spectrum of laboratory work. The course begins with the origins of experimentation in 17th century alchemical studies, moves through the sociology and philosophy of observation reports (studying biochemistry laboratories, solar neutrino experiments, and laser design); and then carries forward to the relation between studies of experimentation and the realism debate in philosophy of science. It is in the context of expanded version of this course, that the Collection could play a crucial role, training students in the history of science to combine archival work with the examination of historical objects. It would be exceedingly useful in this respect to have some materials on the history of computation, perhaps making use of the Babbage museum' s software simulation of early computers.

6. Conclusion

We have attempted in this all-too brief document to convey a detailed sense of the opportunity we see for the rebuilt space that will integrate museological, research, and teaching functions in Harvard's History of Science Department. We have articulated the nature of the collective commitment we have as a Department to seeing this opportunity realized, and hope to have conveyed a sense of the range of expertise and interests we will bring as an intellectual community within FAS to the nuanced, prudent, and lively execution of our vision. We look forward to refining plans with the architects and launching construction within the coming year.


Appendix A: Possible Exhibits


A1. Time, Earth, and Astronomy
Weaving history around the strong holdings in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century astronomical, time-finding and time-keeping, and surveying apparatus, this proposed exhibit will picture the various aspects of the life and practices of the early astronomers. From traveling the world to measure the shape of the earth, to keeping and "selling" time, to charting counties and countries, the complex historical ties between time and navigation will be illuminated. As we know through the recent highly successful"Longitude" conference, the drive to perfecting east-west position determinations was a fundamental force driving the development of both clocks and astronomical time keeping. Norman Ramsey, who pioneered the maser as a time-keeping device, then inaugurated a new order of precision in time keeping. As these technologies became miniaturized, they became the basis (through the Global Positioning Satellite system), of a fundamental alteration in the navigational structure of flight, shipping, and exploration.

A2. The "Show" of Experiment
This is an exhibition about the activities and spaces where science was taught and shown in the early modern period, particularly the teaching cabinet of natural philosophy and the popular itinerant experimental show. Building around the superb 18th-century teaching cabinet presently in the collection (one of four in the world), the exhibit will reconstruct the settings and practices of the teaching of natural philosophy at Harvard in the 18th-century. Historical texture will be added by archival documents about the teaching curriculum, teachers, texts, and exams --a texture that will be further enhanced by the actual reconstruction of these demonstrations (I. B. Cohen has done extensive work in this area). Another section dedicated to the Harvard-trained alchemist George Starkey will focus on the 17th-century context with special emphasis on alchemy and its practices including, perhaps, the reconstruction of some of the experiments (William Newman is a specialist on this topic). A third section (which will also make use of some of the electrostatic apparatus in the collection), will reconstruct the world of itinerant lecturers and experimenters of natural philosophy, the content and choreography of their shows, and the relationship with the culture of the instruments makers.

A3. Teaching Life: The Harvard Physiological Apparatus Company and the Invention of
the Teaching Laboratory
The physiological laboratories at the Harvard Medical School became a key center for introducing modern physiological research and teaching into the U.S. In this proposed exhibition, we would use these laboratories as a focus for asking broader questions about how the practices and concepts of functional biology during a critical period in its history were shaped by place and technology .The physiology laboratories, established by Henry Pickering Bowditch in the 1870's, were reorganized by his successor, William Townsend Porter in the 1890's. As part of the reform, Porter initiated the manufacture of physiological instruments through the Harvard Apparatus Company. The aim, revolutionary at the time, was to put the critical instruments on the laboratory bench in from of each student. "Hands on" experimental learning became the new norm. New kymographs costing $16.00 each replaced the $200.00 European import. Porter invented and manufactured the inductorium, The Company then went on to produce a capillary electrometer, an ergograph, an eye box (water-filled artificial eye), an optical lantern, a moist chamber (for nerve-muscle preparations), and a signal magnet All of these instruments used in contemporary physiological experimentation were brought into the new teaching laboratory, wit broad implications for the process of what it now meant to "know" living organisms, and to have mastered the corpus of knowledge that had been constructed around them. Contemporary photographs, catalogues, texts, and notebooks will be part of the reconstruction.


A4. War, Radar, and Science
Harvard has an extraordinary collection of World War II radar, one of the very best anywhere. We imagine an exhibition of this equipment mounted in such a way that it would not only retell the quite riveting role the radar played in the defense of Britain, blind bombing and the anti-U boat campaign, but also the ways in which it utterly transformed both the practice of electronics from an engineering standpoint, and the very core of physics. From advanced accelerator technology to microwave astronomy, the physico-technical products of Radiation Laboratory work launched an era of science unimaginable in the 1930s. Nor would objects alone be the only thing on display. This would be a wonderful opportunity to video some oral history by figures from Harvard Robert Pound, Norman Ramsey, and Edward Purcell about their experience at the Rad Lab. We could show films and exhibit photographs of the development and use of radar. (Even the old classics like "The Battle of Britain" might be screened as a supplement, we might run such films on monitors outside the exhibit space to draw people). With Ivan Getting's help perhaps we could borrow an old but workable SCR 584 radar system-truck and all-as part of the exhibit. We even have in the University Archives photographs and course manuals that were used to train bomber radar operators, as well as shipboard, and ground-based radar systems.

The exhibition we have in mind would not only display objects, but also work out ways of explaining the physics involved at, different levels-from the simple to explanations that would engage the attention of our physics students. Courses such as introductory electromagnetism, the undergraduate and graduate versions could all, quite profitably, introduce a series of several lectures relating to the radar work with levels of difficulty appropriate to the course.