Abstract
THE report of the advisory council of the Science Museum to the President of the Board of Education for the year 1938 opens on rather an ominous note, for it appears that the suggestion has been made that to provide the badly needed further accommodation a building should be erected with “four or more floors”. Miniature skyscrapers may be quite suitable for offices and flats, but there will be very general agreement with the opinion that it is unwise to erect a museum with several storeys. “The Council,” says the report, “deem it right to mention that the site area they request for the Science Museum in the future falls short of the areas now occupied by our other major national museums.” As the Science Museum represents the very activities on which our national prosperity depends most, it surely is against the country's interest to fetter it by unnecessarily limiting its possibility of serving wide educational purposes, and we trust the views of the Advisory Council will prevail. The various sections of the Museum hitherto known as ‘Divisions’ are now named ‘Departments’. Of these there are now five, namely, the Department of Physics and Geophysics, the Department of Astronomy, Mathematics, Optics and Chemistry, the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering and Land Transport, the Department of Industrial Engineering, and the Department of Air and Water Transport. These various titles at once suggest the names of great pioneers, all of whose work is represented in the Museum. Recent acquisitions, special exhibitions, lectures, attendances, staff are all referred to in the report, which contains information also of the Library, testimony being paid to the initiative and resource of Dr. 8. O. Bradford, who last year retired after being in charge of the Library for thirteen years. The record of the Museum is one of steady progress.
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The Science Museum. Nature 143, 1016–1017 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/1431016c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1431016c0