History of Science & Technology at Peabody Museum

Magic Lantern Extravaganza at Yale

Terry Borton, photographed by Jody Dole. Credit: Jody Dole.

Earlier this semester, a live magic lantern show thrilled audience members of all ages at Yale! Our History of Science and Technology collection and the Peabody Museum through its Student Programs office were happy to be two of the co-sponsors of the event.

Drama, music, art, and history became one as expert lantern projectionist Terry Borton used nineteenth-century lanterns and lantern slides to fill a darkened university theater with humor, whimsy, pathos, and (gentle) terror. He was superbly assisted by his wife, Deborah, and by voice and piano accompanist Elizabeth Joy Kelly. The performers were dressed in evocative Victorian-inspired garb.

Advertising for the American Magic-Lantern Theater’s touring show. Credit: Terry Borton.

Terry is a fourth-generation lanternist, who formed the touring American Magic-Lantern Theater in 1992, which NPR called “a living national treasure”. He also has a doctorate in education from Harvard and previously served as the Editor in Chief of Weekly Reader for 15 years.

The cover of Terry and Deborah Borton’s first book, “Before the Movies”.

A Joseph Boggs Beale slide from 1899, illustrating Rose Hartwick Thorpe’s well-known narrative poem “Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight”, which was written in 1867. Credit: Terry Borton.

The Bortons published the book Before the Movies in 2014, and Terry published Magic Lantern Art: The American Screen’s First Great Narrative Artist, Joseph Boggs Beale in 2026. Their extensive collection related to Beale and to magic lanterns at large has been acquired by the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, which will open in September 2026.

The cover of Terry Borton’s latest book, “Magic Lantern Art”.

The magic lantern extravaganza which took place at Yale was organized and opened by Lisa Kereszi, who frequently uses artifacts related to the history of the image from our collection in her courses and displays. She has also donated a number of photography-related artifacts to us and always keeps an eye out at auctions and sales on our behalf. She is a great collaborator for us and for the Peabody Museum at large!

Dr. Sarah Pickman, with one of our mechanical lantern slides donated by Professor Emeritus Thomas L. Lentz, MD. When hand-cranked, the slide makes a mouse jump into the mouth of a sleeping man, which was a very popular motif in the 1800s. Credit: Division of History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum.

At the beginning of the evening, Yale alumnus Sarah Pickman gave a fascinating talk about the history of magic lanterns, referencing many of the instruments and slides in our own collection. Sarah is one of our former Graduate Research Assistants and graduated from Yale with a Ph.D. from the History of Science and Medicine Program.

Deborah Borton preparing for the show. Credit: Jody Dole.

Terry Borton steps into the spotlight. Credit: Jody Dole.

Then Terry, wonderfully introduced by Ben Donaldson, took to the stage. A wide range of students, staff, faculty, creatives, and some families with children had come to see what magic lanterns were all about. They were a common and extremely important visual and dramatic medium for centuries, yet today most people have never heard of them. This was also the first time that I’ve been able to attend a live lantern show, even though our collection includes tons of fascinating historical lanterns and slides, which get used a lot in classes and exhibitions!

Terry, assisted by Deborah and accompanied by Elizabeth, uses his gorgeous double lantern to show how a mechanical slide can make a man’s nose grow like Pinocchio. Credit: Ben Hagari.

This slide depicts the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée in St. Pierre on the island of Martinique, which was one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Credit: Terry Borton.

Terry used a wide variety of still and mechanical slides and multiple lanterns to reproduce the different types of sights and sounds one might have encountered when magic lantern shows were in their heyday. For example, there were quick visual gags, which often only needed one mechanical slide to produce the action.

There were extended dramatic episodes, like superb recitations of Edgar Allen Poe‘s “The Raven” and of the story of the Pied Piper, each accompanied by a set of gorgeously illustrated slides. At one point, Terry also took to a smaller lantern with a slide of a roaring lion to show the audience how past lanternists achieved the famous phantasmagoria effect with terrifying ghosts, demons, and skeletons!

More beautifully staged and colored scenes on lantern slides in the Borton collection. Credit: Terry Borton.

After the lantern show, Terry gave a fascinating talk about Joseph Boggs Beale, the subject of his latest book and a focus of his and Deborah’s collection, which is now at the Lucas Museum. Beale was an American artist who became a tremendously prolific illustrator of lantern slides. His lantern artwork exhibited sophisticated use of light and shadow, fine detailing, gorgeous color, and dramatic staging and foreshadowing.

During the show, Terry brought to life Edgar Allen Poe’s famous narrative poem “The Raven”, first published in 1845, through a dramatic recitation accompanied by a beautifully illustrated set of Beale slides including this. Credit: Terry Borton.

Lantern slides can also depict striking natural scenes, like this light- and reflection-filled example from the Borton collection. Credit: Terry Borton.

This magic lantern extravaganza was a unique opportunity for all of us at Yale to get a vivid taste of a medium, technology, and style of performance which was central to entertainment and information sharing in many parts of the world for centuries – before it was largely forgotten. It is a little like forgetting the collective existence and importance of the television, radio, and overhead or digital projector!

Despite having largely been forgotten, lanterns remain woven throughout not just the past but the present of Yale University. In addition to our amazing collection of lanterns, lantern slides, and related artifacts and ephemera at the Peabody Museum, there are lantern related holdings in many other university collections, which are used in creative and historical projects and in exhibitions and sometimes in science as well.

There are also still thousands of historical lantern slides and sometimes the lanterns themselves spread across many departments and programs, from when the medium was a vital part of research and education. More than once, I have been excited to stumble across wooden cabinets in out-of-the-way corners of university buildings, which are filled with hundreds of images of the people, activities, and innovations which took place here before the mid-1900s saw lanterns begin to fade from consciousness and view.

A final farewell from the Borton collection! Credit: Terry Borton.

The sponsors for this magic lantern event included the Yale Peabody Museum, our YPM Division of History of Science and Technology, the Traphagen Family Alumni Speakers Fund, the Whitney Humanities Center, the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities, Yale Film and Media Studies, Yale History of Art, and the Poorvu Center Belonging Grant.

New Book Explores Board of Longitude

Thank you to the Yale Peabody Museum for this great press article about the book that I recently co-authored for Cambridge University Press, which I have also reproduced below! Thank you to Yale’s Early Modern Studies Program as well for recently hosting a book launch event for it, which was co-sponsored by the Peabody Museum and by the History of Science and Medicine Program.

The event included my discussing the book with Professor Paola Bertucci and Professor William Rankin. Everything which I learned during the Board of Longitude research project influenced my approach to our new History of Science and Technology gallery at the Peabody and especially to our case called “Contemplation and Conquest”, when Paola and I were curating it. (Bill, an award-winning cartographer, also designed a map for our gallery.)

This is the display case called “Contemplation and Conquest” in our new History of Science & Technology gallery at the Yale Peabody Museum. It contains centuries-old technologies from our collection related to astronomy, navigation, and surveying. Credit: Division of History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum.

Alexi Baker spent years investigating the fascinating story of the British search for longitude at sea, where science and technology intersected with the global interests of empire. Before joining the Yale Peabody Museum to operate its History of Science and Technology collection, Dr. Baker was a post-doctoral researcher on a high-profile five-year project about the Board of Longitude, the first British government body for funding science and technology from 1714 to 1828. The project was based at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Yale recently hosted a launch event for the final output of this project, “The Board of Longitude: Science, Innovation, and Empire”, a book from Cambridge University Press authored by Dr. Baker and her colleagues. “When people are familiar with any part of the longitude story today, it is usually just with the innovative self-taught clock maker John Harrison and his efforts to earn a longitude reward,” Baker says. “However, there are many other important and exciting people and dimensions involved in this story. Our book is the first to tell the full history of the Board of Longitude. It reveals the complex, dynamic, and influential world of longitude which swirled around the British rewards.”

In 1714, the British Parliament established massive rewards of up to £20,000 for improved methods of finding a ship’s longitude coordinate in the open ocean, which would make maritime trade and travel safer. At that time, people were lucky to earn £100 a year, so many people from across Europe, its colonies, and Russia vied for the money. Parliament appointed 24 commissioners as acceptable judges of whether people should receive development funding and ultimately the rewards. They included government and university officials related to trade, defense, mathematics, astronomy, and technology which were all subjects closely tied to navigation.

“It was wonderful to be able to tell an audience at Yale about the new things we discovered about the early modern search for longitude at sea,” says Dr. Baker. “We spent years looking at the archives of the Board of Longitude, Royal Observatory, Royal Society, East India Company, British government, and more. We also looked through other types of sources including newspapers and broadsheets, satirical cartoons and literature, and personal letters.” The resulting book sheds light on not just the history of science and technology but also of government and politics, publishing and the arts, economics and intellectual property, religion and gender, and empire and colonization.

“The longitude story encompasses many innovations including the marine chronometer but also the sextant and the annual ‘Nautical Almanac’ which are still used today, as well as instrumentation and data being made more standardized and precise,” Baker elaborates. “The history of the Board of Longitude intersects with well-known European expeditions to the Pacific Ocean and in search of the Northwest Passage as well, including the multicultural conflicts and collaborations which resulted. It connects to multinational astronomical projects and the establishment of colonial observatories. However, this history is also an intensely human story – involving vast numbers of people with different motivations and backgrounds, all trying to hitch their star to longitude.”

The Yale celebration of this book was organized by the Early Modern Studies Program and co-sponsored by the History of Science and Medicine Program and the Peabody Museum. Dr. Baker, who is an affiliate of both programs, introduced the book to the audience and then discussed it with Professor Paola Bertucci and Professor William Rankin. Professor Bertucci is also the curator-in-charge of the Peabody’s Division of History of Science and Technology. Professor Rankin is an award-winning cartographer who designed an important map for the new History of Science and Technology gallery at the Peabody, which Bertucci and Baker curated.

Baker researched and wrote four chapters for the new book, focusing on the first half of the history of the Board of Longitude, as well as some of the front and end matter. “I showed how the longitude rewards and commissioners of 1714 were shaped by the previous centuries of related developments in Europe,” says Dr. Baker. “I also discovered that the Commissioners’ early history and impacts have been completely misunderstood.” Traditionally historians have assumed that the officials’ failure to hold any communal meetings until at least 1737, and their only sporadically holding meetings before the 1760s, was dereliction of duty.

“In fact, the Commissioners of Longitude were intended to operate as individual longitude authorities, as many of them had already been doing before 1714,” Baker explains. “They did participate in the massive outpouring of longitude proposals and discussions spawned by the establishment of the rewards. When they gradually transitioned to being a standing body, it was because of their interest in repeatedly approving development funding for John Harrison and other innovators, the increasing bureaucratization of the British government at large, and the appointment of the highly organized Nevil Maskelyne as Astronomer Royal and Commissioner.”

Dr. Baker researched a number of eighteenth-century longitude actors who have largely been ignored today as well. One was Christopher Irwin from Ireland, who savvily leveraged press coverage and influential connections to get his “marine chair” trialed at sea alongside one of Harrison’s timekeepers. The chair was a stabilized shipboard platform for astronomical viewing, which was a common approach over the centuries to try to improve the astronomical finding of longitude. Baker looked into the women involved in the search for longitude as well and discovered that one of the anonymous longitude authors who approached the Board of Longitude was Elizabeth Johnson. Johnson was one of the sisters of the famous painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and she began publishing tracts after her husband abandoned her with seven children.

Dr. Baker delved most deeply into the history of Jane Squire, who made a splash in her own time by publishing two detailed and lavishly produced longitude books in 1742 and 1743. Squire was dismissed by later historians, but her books were discussed in polite and learned society, and one of them was even sent to the Pope for consideration.

“Jane Squire was an absolutely fascinating woman.” Baker enthuses. “She invested heavily in a project to recover shipwrecks, brought legal action against the project’s powerful backers for withheld profits, faced attempted prosecution for openly being Catholic likely at their behest, and then endured debtors’ prison for years.” After emerging from prison, Squire dedicated herself to developing an improved method of finding longitude at sea for the benefit of better scientific and Christian understanding. She thought to her dying day that she deserved a reward for her scheme, which was well-informed but too complex to be practical.

“The records of Squire’s discussions with key longitude Commissioners and her attempts to gain attention and approbation are vital pieces of evidence about their early history,” Baker says. “She was also impressively determined to succeed in the longitude sphere, which was very male-coded. She railed in her books against the thought that ‘Mathematicks are not the proper Study of Women’ and refused to be confined to genteel pastimes like ‘Needles, Cards, and Dice’.”

In addition to relating important histories like these, the new book will help to guide readers through other popular and scholarly resources produced by the Board of Longitude project. These include a large digitized archive for which Dr. Baker and other team members wrote the historical explanations, major museum exhibitions at Greenwich such as “Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude” which traveled overseas including to Mystic Seaport Museum, and additional books and articles. The project even inspired television and radio programming and the establishment of a modern British “Longitude Prize”, which offered £8 million for innovations in medicine rather than navigation.

In addition to Dr. Baker, the authors of “The Board of Longitude: Science, Innovation, and Empire” are: Dr. Richard Dunn from the Science Museum of London; Dr. Rebekah Higgitt from National Museums Scotland; Professor Simon Schaffer from the University of Cambridge; and Dr. Sophie Waring from the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret of London. Their contributions to the volume dramatically expand historians’ understanding of the history of the Board of Longitude after the 1760s as well, when it impacted an even wider range of scientific and navigational activities, and when it was ultimately transformed into a different standing body in 1828.

Professor Daniel Martinez HoSang receives Andrew Carnegie Fellowship

Many congratulations to Professor Daniel Martinez HoSang for receiving a 2026 Andrew Carnegie fellowship! HoSang, a professor of American studies and political science in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is a frequent collaborator of our History of Science and Technology collection. He advised Professor Paola Bertucci and me extensively when we were curating our new exhibition gallery at the Peabody Museum, and he regularly invites me to introduce artifacts and displays to his courses for Yale students and New Haven teachers.

The fellowship will support Professor HoSang’s research into political polarization and identifying potential solutions. The Carnegie Corporation is awarding just 24 research grants of $200,000 nationwide this year for projects in the social sciences and humanities.

Our display about Eugenics at Yale in the new History of Science and Technology gallery at the Peabody Museum. Credit: Division of History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum.

When we were designing the first-ever exhibition gallery for our collection, which opened at the Peabody Museum in 2024, Professor HoSang provided a large amount of insightful feedback about how we were planning to discuss the history of eugenics at the university using artefacts related to Robert Yerkes. He also introduced us to other members of the Anti-Eugenics Collective, who were generously willing to share their expertise and provide feedback.

I regularly bring artifacts related to anthropometry, craniometry, and phrenology to the professor’s courses about scientific racism for Yale students and sometimes for K-12 teachers from the local New Haven community and also introduce them to our displays. The artifacts include the 19th-century bronze cranium about which I previously wrote. In the process, I have learned a lot about the history of eugenics in New Haven, including about individuals related to some of the natural specimens at the Peabody Museum.

Credit: Division of History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum.

A Jock for (Moon) Rocks

As NASA‘s Artemis II mission concludes, having sent humans around the Moon for the first time since 1972, let’s revisit Yale’s participation in past lunar missions!

Evelyn Boyd Granville in 1945. Source: Wikipedia.

Many Yale scientists and alumnae supported the planning and operation of the Apollo moon missions. This included Evelyn Boyd Granville, who did vital work in celestial mechanics, trajectory computation, and digital computer techniques for Apollo. Boyd Granville was only the second Black woman to ever receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university, which she earned from Yale in 1949.

Credit: Division of History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum.

Many Yale faculty and alumnae also participated in the science which came after the pioneering lunar missions. For example, Professor Brian J. Skinner used the x-ray camera above to study rock and soil samples which the Apollo 11 astronauts brought back from the first lunar landing in 1969! The apparatus, which still has “SKIN” written in chalk on one leg, is now in our History of Science and Technology collection at the Yale Peabody Museum.

*Yale Daily News* from September 29, 1969.

Professor Skinner, whom the Yale Daily News fondly called “A Jock for Rocks”, was then the Eugene Higgins Professor of Geology and Geophysics. He had also recently served as departmental chair and won a Guggenheim fellowship.

The student newspaper describes how in September 1969, Skinner and his colleagues Professor Karl K. Turekian and Associate Professor Neville L. Carter “gingerly opened vials of dull, dark gray lunar soil, toyed with the moon dust and rock fragments, and fielded questions from newsmen at a press conference at Kline Geology Laboratory”.

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin train on Earth to collect lunar soil samples and to film the collection with a Hasselblad 500EL SLR camera. Credit: NASA.

The Apollo 11 crew had collected and used carefully designed boxes to safely return almost 48 pounds of lunar samples to Earth. They were then distributed in small amounts to a variety of scientists in different locations.

Skinner and his Yale colleagues planned to study different aspects of these extraordinary, “pristine” samples of ancient lunar soil. Professor Seymour R. Lipsky from the Yale School of Medicine intended to look for the presence of organic compounds, the building blocks of life on Earth.

The high-tech x-ray camera in our collection which Skinner used during his research is a Buerger Precession Camera, model 3000, from Charles Supper Company Inc. The MIT professor Martin Buerger and machinist Charles Supper originally designed this type of camera in the late 1930s and early 1940s to take x-ray diffraction pictures of crystals. It was the standard technology for that purpose until the 1980s.

The camera focuses monochromatic x-rays onto a crystal specimen, with a screen and photographic film set behind it. Its base includes a turntable, so that the apparatus can be freely orientated, and it can also move along horizontal tracks in order to adjust the spacing.

A number of Yale faculty took part in the Apollo 11 Lunar Science Conference, in which several hundred scientists participated in Houston less than five months after the Apollo 11 astronauts returned to Earth.

The abstracts from the conference show that Skinner spoke with Professor Horace Winchell about mineralogical studies of primary rocks and fine-grained regolith. Skinner later published an article about how high crystallization temperatures were indicated for igneous rocks from Tranquility Base. He and Winchell also described glassy spherules in the lunar regolith returned by Apollo 11.

Professor Turekian and Dinkar P. Kharkhar spoke about using sequential neutron activation to look for 25 elements in the lunar samples, about which they later published an article. Neville L. Carter published about growth and deformational structures in silicates from the samples along with Yale colleagues Irene S. Leung, Hans G. Ave’Lallemant, and Louis A. Fernandez.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s boot and bootprint in the lunar soil during the Apollo 11 moon landing. Credit: NASA.

Later in 1970, Carter told Yale alumni during a richly-illustrated presentation about the great potential of space exploration, despite NASA having already succeeded in landing on the moon and despite its funding having been decreased. He promised that “today’s space program will be essential to your children’s children” and predicted that we would “reap an enormous return […] within fifty years”.

Celebrating Lunar New Year with Historical Chinese Technologies

We recently had a wonderful time sharing historical Chinese technologies from our collection with the public at the Peabody Museum during Lunarfest of New Haven! It is the largest annual celebration of the Lunar New Year in Connecticut.

I was joined by Wonik Son and Joyce Zhou, in the shadow of the magnificent mastodon in The Human Footprint gallery. Wonik, who is our collection’s Graduate Museum Fellow this semester, is a Ph.D. student from the Yale Program in the History of Science and Medicine. Joyce, who is a Ph.D. student in History of Art, researched one of our Chinese sundials during a course which Professor Paola Bertucci taught using the collection.

Credit: Wonik Son, Division of the History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum.

We brought six different interesting technologies made in China across the centuries and shared them with a large number of museum visitors of all ages and backgrounds. Joyce and a number of the Lunarfest visitors were able to shed more light on what was engraved, painted, or printed on some of the objects. A number of visitors also asked insightful questions, which will help to guide our ongoing research into these artifacts! It was lovely to entertain so many young children as well, who were visiting the Peabody with their families.

Our longtime donor, Professor Emeritus Thomas L. Lentz MD, generously donated these Chinese technologies to our collection alongside other relevant artifacts, after I mentioned that a number of Yale students had asked about historical scientific instruments made in Asia. He also donated technologies made in, for example, Japan and India over the centuries.

Credit: Tom Lentz, Division of the History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum.

This is a hand cannon made of cast bronze. Cannons like this and other firearms were invented in China, after gunpowder was invented there by at least the ninth century. The inscription on this cannon, which is almost 18 inches long, says that it was made in the third year of the reign of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty – the Hongwu Emperor, who ruled from 1368 to 1398.

The potbelly on the cannon would have held gunpowder. It has a small hole, where a torch or glowing ember could have been used to ignite the gunpowder. The resulting gases would have propelled a projectile like an arrow or bullet out of the cannon at high speed. A wooden pole could have been stuck into the other end of the weapon, and it also has a handle.

Magnetic compasses were likely invented in China as well, where they were initially used for other purposes than navigation. Chinese compasses point south, unlike compasses in the European tradition, which point north. This is a geomancer’s compass, probably from the later 1700s or early 1800s. It is made of a circular piece of lacquered wood measuring a little more than 11 inches in diameter, with a magnetic compass inset in the middle. Trained geomancers would have used it for, essentially, feng shui.

They could use this compass to advise people about things like the auspicious dates on which to hold events and the auspicious orientations for buildings and roads, by cross-referencing the information recorded on and revealed by the instrument. This included information related to Yin and Yang, astrology, time of day, the elements, directions, forms of landscape, and more. There are similar geomancer’s compasses in the collections of the Science Museum in London and of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

This is a beautiful pair of spectacles or eyeglasses with a matching case, made in China using tortoiseshell in about 1800. They contain dark glass lenses with no magnification. Tortoises had spiritual and symbolic significance in China. The shells of large sea turtles were used to make attractive luxury goods like these, and they were probably sourced from other parts of Asia. Preparing the shells for use would have involved boiling, flattening, and polishing them.

The rims of these eyeglasses are tortoiseshell. The metal frame is made of paktong – an alloy of zinc, copper, and nickel that looks like silver but is harder and does not tarnish. The spectacles feature auspicious symbols include bat motifs as well as circular money motifs at the end of the arms. The arms are doubly hinged, allowing the glasses to fold up to fit in their case. The case is made of wood covered in a luminous tortoise shell veneer, and it has two metal rings which might have allowed an owner to hang it from their clothes.

This attractive sundial, which Joyce Zhou researched in the past for a Yale course, was probably made in China in the later 1800s. Its string gnomon, or the part of the instrument which casts a shadow to tell time, folds down for easier transport. The sundial is built around an ornate plate made of cast brass and decorated with blue and green glass jewels.

There is a magnetic compass inset in the center which points south, surrounded by an enamel hour dial with Chinese and Arabic numerals. A folding brass bracket holds one end of the string gnomon and the plumb bob. There is a decorated bubble level and three leveling feet with red glass caps. This instrument brings together European and Chinese aesthetic and technological traditions.

This is a dotchin balance, probably made in about 1900. It was manufactured in Guangdong, according to the paper label inside its case. The 12-inch long wooden case is shaped much like a violin, with two pieces attached at a pivot that can be held shut by a plaited loop when the balance is inside. The arm of the balance is made of marked ivory, and the pan and weight are made of brass.

The dotchin is a type of steelyard balance with a pan and a sliding weight counterbalance suspended from an arm. Such instruments were made in large numbers in China in the 1800s and early 1900s, to help merchants weigh goods such as medicinal ingredients. Chinese immigrants during this period often took the balances with them around the world. They were used, for example, by some of the participants in the California gold rush. These instruments are still used in some places today.

Abacuses have been used for counting over thousands of years and in many parts of the world. This is a Chinese style of abacus known as the suanpan. The suanpan was first described in a book more than 1800 years ago. This example was likely made in the mid-20th century to be given as a wedding gift. The images and texts on the paper lining of its storage box provide advice for how to be a successful married couple. The outside of the instrument’s red, padded, wooden case with brass fittings is decorated with a dragon and a phoenix. Abacuses are still used in many places.

Our abacus consists of 13 wooden rods in a wooden frame. A separator beam separates two wooden beads on each rod in the upper deck from five beads each in the bottom. The ones in the lower deck are sometimes called earth beads or water beads and carry a value of 1 in their column. The ones in the upper deck are sometimes called heaven beads and carry a value of 5 in their column. The rightmost column represents the ones place and to the left of it are the tens, hundreds, thousands and so on. Beads moved toward the beam are counted, while those moved away from it are not.

Only one upper bead and four lower beads are needed for counting, addition, and subtraction. The other beads can be used for hexadecimal computation or more complicated mathematical calculations. Suanpan techniques have even been developed to do multiplication, division, square root, and cube root operations at high speed.

Wonik, Joyce, and I loved sharing these interesting historical technologies with museum visitors from near and far. Many thanks to our colleagues at the Yale Peabody Museum and Yale-China for inviting us to participate in this wonderful annual event!

Critical computing and teaching with collections

It was so rewarding to once more use our History of Science and Technology collection at the Yale Peabody Museum to support a variety of university courses in Fall 2025, including an innovative new computing course! As YaleNews explains, “Topics in Critical Computing” aims to teach undergraduate students to think deeply and critically about the technology that surrounds them. In a year, it will also become one of five required interdisciplinary courses for a new certificate program on Computing, Culture, and Society.

Julián Posada, an assistant professor of American Studies at Yale, approached me about incorporating historical artifacts into “Topics in Critical Computing” as well as into his course “Platforms and Cultural Production”. He co-teaches the former, and will co-direct the new certificate program, with Theodore Kim – a professor of Computer Science.

Julián Posada and Theodore Kim, at center, with students in their course, “Topics in Critical Computing.” Photo credit: Julián Posada.

It was wonderful to share a variety of historical computing and calculating related technologies with the students in these two courses, as I have done a number of times in the past for Professor Michael Fisher‘s courses on computing history. They helped to spark sophisticated questions and conversations about such technologies, past and present, and about their impacts and ethics in real world contexts.

This was also the first outing for our amazing operable Apple II Plus computer from about 1979-1982, which was donated by Professor Emeritus Tom Lentz. It was hard to tear the students (and instructors) away from its almost 500 original games – with evocative early audio, graphics, and keyboard and mouse commands!

Our Apple II Plus computer with some of its original peripherals, object YPM HST.400840, a gift of Professor Emeritus Thomas Lentz. Photo credit: Tom Lentz.

Apple Computer launched the first Apple II model in 1977. It was a self-contained machine aimed at the consumer market containing circuitry, a keyboard, a power source, and permanent memory for BASIC. The display used with it was usually a television, and a floppy disc drive was introduced in 1978. A year later, Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers.

The Apple II Plus was the second model in this series of computers. It came with 48K RAM, as well as a new auto-start ROM for easier start-up and screen editing. It was sold from June 1979 to December 1982 and cost $1,195, or more than $5,000 today. Approximately 500,000 Apple II Plus computers were sold during its four years in production.

Examples of the games available to play on our Apple II Plus computer. Photo credit: Alexi Baker.

Many thanks to Tom Lentz for continuing to donate such wonderful hands-on historical devices to us for enriching classroom learning! Thank you as well to Louise Moulin who was my Graduate Museum Fellow this semester, Andrew Koh who owned an Apple II+ in his youth, Claire Fox a Digital Preservation Librarian, and restorer Mick Sybal for consulting with us in order to get the Apple II Plus computer up and running.

Paola Bertucci wins the 2025 Paul Bunge Prize

Congratulations to Professor Paola Bertucci for winning the prestigious 2025 Paul Bunge Prize! The Paul Bunge Prize is the most high-profile international award given for individual works on the history of scientific instruments. It is awarded by the German Chemical Society (GDCh) and the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry (DBG).

Professor Bertucci, who is Professor of History and History of Medicine at Yale, won the award for her latest book – In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2023. The award announcement says:

The author sheds light on [Abbé] Nollet’s little-known trip to Italy in 1749 and his secret mission to investigate automated silk production. Particularly relevant to the Paul Bunge Prize are the chapters on Nollet’s research into “miraculous” healings using electrical instruments, which he later exposed as a hoax. Bertucci skillfully links scientific debates about the legitimacy of experimental results with public controversies about electrical healing methods in the 18th century. With her work, she sheds new light on the scientific and public significance of electrical devices in the 18th century.

Class Displays Explore Medicine, Photography, and Museums

When the renovated Yale Peabody Museum reopened in 2024, it included the Alison F. Richard Study Gallery, a wonderful new first-floor exhibition space dedicated to the classroom use of museum objects. Each semester, Yale instructors and students from a wide array of subjects interact with the cultural artifacts, natural specimens, and archival materials which are safeguarded by the museum.

Credit: Division of History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum. Photographed by Kristine Ericson.

The “Y” on the sign for the Study Gallery is made up of Yale-blue artifacts drawn from across the Peabody collections, including HST! Credit: Division of History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum. Photographed by Kristine Ericson.

For the Study Gallery, the Student Programs office and collections staff at the Peabody work with instructors and students who have taught or taken object-based classes to create accompanying displays which will run for less than a year. These displays give museum visitors a taste of the ways in which Yale classes use artifacts, and they allow students in particular to gain experience with all of the different aspects of creating and installing exhibitions!

The first round of Study Gallery displays for 2024 encompassed classes on medical literature, photography, natural specimens, and museums. I was happy to be able to contribute a large number of artifacts from our History of Science and Technology [HST] collection to these displays.

Dr. Matthew Morrison, M.D. curated a display of medical artifacts from across the centuries drawn entirely from our collection. Dr. Morrison is an emergency physician and published author as well as a Lecturer in Medical Humanities at Yale.

He is also a longtime collaborator of HST, who invites me to share artifacts with the students in his medical literature courses every semester of every year. I’ve written blog posts in the past about some of these enjoyable classes including here, here, and here.

It was wonderful to share the results of this fruitful relationship, and so many of our interesting medical artifacts, with the public! I have also enjoyed speaking with visitors in the gallery about specific objects on display.

Lisa Kereszi curated a display of historical artifacts and archives related to the history of photography, including the technologies and media which preceded it. These included many objects and images from our own collection such as camera obscuras, daguerreotypes, and cameras of all ages from glass plate to film to digital.

Lisa is an accomplished photographer as well as a Lecturer in Photography and Critic and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art at Yale. She has frequently sought to incorporate objects from the HST collection into her courses, as well as materials from other collections at the Peabody Museum. She also kindly keeps an eye out for potential acquisitions for us!

In the adjoining room of the Study Gallery, a group of students taught by Chitra Ramalingam got the full experience of researching, designing and helping to install a display about museum practice. They incorporated diverse objects from the Peabody collections as well as a commissioned student artwork.

Dr. Ramalingam has collaborated frequently with our HST collection over the years, including by using our objects in her classes about the history of science and photography. I wrote about a couple of these events here and here.

Chitra’s students incorporated one case of our objects into their display. These included microscope slides of botanical specimens and of a cross-sectioned earthworm which were donated by Steven Passoa, as well as (reproductions of) two 19th-century lantern slides of hand-painted insects which were donated by Professor Thomas Lentz.

We will be contributing objects to the exciting new displays coming to the Study Gallery in early 2025 as well – so stay tuned!

Art and Technology – Ornamental Turning and the Rose Engine Lathe

David Lindow‘s recent presentation about the history of turning and engine lathes at the Yale Art Gallery’s Furniture Study Center was very interesting and well-attended! Elizabeth Fox, who is a Fellow in Decorative Arts at the Art Gallery, organized the event.

Eric Litke, Museum Assistant in American Decorative Arts at YUAG, kicks off the event. Photo credit: Jessica Smolinski, Yale University Art Gallery.

I was happy to contribute four pocket watches from our History of Science and Technolgy collection, which were in part manufactured through the art of turning. Here you can see Patricia Kane and John Stuart Gordon, Curators of American Decorative Arts at the Art Gallery, taking a closer look at our watches alongside visitors.

John Stuart Gordon and Patricia Kane discuss our pocket watches. Photo credit: Jessica Smolinski, Yale University Art Gallery.

Pat moves in for a closer look. Photo credit: Jessica Smolinski, Yale University Art Gallery.

Visitors enjoy the watches alongside beautiful examples of wood turning from the Yale Art Gallery and from the Plumier Foundation. Photo credit: Jessica Smolinski, Yale University Art Gallery.

I was happy to soak up David Lindow’s knowledge at the event myself, since many of the objects in our collection were produced partly through turning. The master horologist has an encyclopedic knowledge of the centuries-long history of turning – including a multitude of fun facts – as well as years of experience as a turner himself.

David Lindow addresses the audience. Photo credit: Jessica Smolinski, Yale University Art Gallery.

Photo credit: Jessica Smolinski, Yale University Art Gallery.

David also gave a live demonstration of engine turning! It is wonderful that he and the Plumier Foundation are helping to keep this important art and technology alive today.

History of Science and Technology in the new Yale Peabody Museum

Today the Yale Peabody Museum reopened to the public after a large-scale renovation and reimagining, which included a four-year closure! Entry to the museum is now completely free – but make sure to book a timed ticket if you want to visit us in the weeks soon after reopening.

Yale University’s service dog, Heidi, celebrates the reopening of the Peabody Museum next to its well-known statue of a Torosaurus dinosaur. Image credit: Aggie Scielzo

If you visited the museum in the past, you will still recognize the French Gothic exterior of the original 1920s building designed by Charles Klauder. Some of the objects on display will also be returning friends. However, the renovated interior of the building and its expansions both vertically and to the north, including the building of a second monumental tower, comprise a breathtaking new modern museum.

Image credit: Division of History of Science and Technology, Yale Peabody Museum.

It promises the public and the Yale community many new ways to enjoy, learn from, and create with the Peabody’s artifacts and its ongoing research and other activities. Almost all of the displays are entirely new, there will be exciting new programming and multimedia content, and there are many new spaces to serve both students and the public.

You can now see hundreds of fascinating historical artifacts from our History of Science and Technology collection on display in the new Peabody as well! In the future, there will be related events and activities in the museum spaces. Students and staff are also working on accompanying virtual content for the Amuse app, which can be accessed from anywhere and not just while visiting the museum.

Currently about 70% of our objects which are on display are in the first-ever, dedicated exhibition gallery for the HST collection. (This means that the space is permanently dedicated to objects from our collection, but the specific objects and multimedia content that visitors will see can change over time, as we share more artifacts and themes and collaborate with different people.) The objects are mixed with engaging images, multimedia content, and texts – including contributions from people outside of the museum.

You can find this new HST gallery by coming through the original entrance to the museum at the corner of Whitney Avenue and Sachem Street. Past visitors will recall that a model of a giant squid used to hang in the lobby. Now a family of flying dinosaurs perch on the visitor’s desk and just outside of one of the arched windows inside our gallery!

After you enter the museum here, go up the grand stone staircase to the second floor, which leads straight to our gorgeous new displays. I will post proper photos of the gallery in the future, working with the museum press office. Elsewhere on the second floor, you will also find the desk of Yale scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs from our collection.

About 30% of our objects which are currently on display in the Peabody Museum are on the first floor, in new galleries dedicated to student- and instructor-designed displays. The Student Programs office and collections staff work with instructors and students who have taught or taken classes that use museum objects to create accompanying displays which will run for less than a year.

These galleries give museum visitors a taste of the ways in which Yale classes use artifacts, and they allow students in particular to gain experience with all of the different aspects of creating and installing exhibitions. I hope to bring you proper photos of these displays in the future as well!

Two of the current displays include large numbers of our objects – one on medical artifacts curated by Dr. Matthew Morrison, M.D. and one on photography curated by Lisa Kereszi. Dr. Morrison is a longtime collaborator of the HST collection, who invites me to share artifacts with the students in his medical literature courses every semester of every year. I’ve written blog posts in the past about some of these classes including here, here, and here.

There will be even more of our artifacts in museum spaces which will be opening in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to the exciting new Yale Peabody Museum – and welcome back!

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