naturally, more or less exclusively, to the industrial or trade-producing interests” of the
countries involved in the Exhibition and continued:
“This was not the idea of the proposed Loan Collection at South Kensington. For that
Collection it was desired to obtain not only apparatus and objects from manufacturers, but
also objects of historic interest from museums and private cabinets, where they are treasured
as sacred relics, as well as apparatus in present use in the laboratories of professors.”241
Recall how, some 40 years earlier, it had still been exceptional that van Breda had decided not
to dispose of many of the instruments acquired by van Marum. By the 1870s, appreciation for
the material witnesses of the history of science was evidently on the rise.
Just as strikingly, the Committee’s aim in organising this exhibition was to initiate “the
creation of a Science Museum”.242 Again, this was stated quite forthrightly in the catalogue to
the Special Loan Collection, in the description of one of the Committee’s first meetings:
“Their Lordships [of the Committee] stated their conviction that the development of the
Educational, and certain other, Departments of the South Kensington Museum, and their
enlargement into a Museum somewhat of the nature of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers
in Paris, and other similar institutions on the Continent, would tend to the advancement of
science, and be of great service to the industrial progress of this country.”243
The next sentence, however, proved more decisive:
“While expressing their hope that the Loan Collection might forward this desirable object,
their Lordships guarded themselves against committing Her Majesty’s Government, which
had not yet fully considered the subject, to any definite scheme.”
In other words, there was no money available. In fact it was going to take more than three
decades before an independent “Science Museum” was created out of parts of the South
Kensington Museum’s collections in 1909.
Nevertheless, the fact that these sentiments were being expressed so clearly at this point in
history and that the Special Loan Collection was held at all can be seen as the culmination of
a variety of developments in history that now began to have a strong bearing on the way in
which scientific instruments or instrument collections - were displayed and perceived.
Firstly, there was the growing authority of “science”: not only had this come to be seen as one
of the root causes for Western societies’ recent rapid progress, it had also come to be seen as
an area in which it was worth pursuing a career. Secondly, there was the tradition of the
World’s Fairs, or “International Industrial Exhibitions”, as the Committee would have phrased
it: even though the Special Loan Collection was supposed to be different, the World’s Fairs
still acted as a foil for it. Thirdly, there was the - intended - venue: the South Kensington
Museum; it was only because of “various circumstances, which could not be foreseen” that
241 Ibid.
242 Ibid., xi.
243 Ibid.
244 Ibid., xviii.
the Special Loan Collection was held in galleries nearby. Fourthly, there was the notion
that a Museum - with a capital “M” - that had been established through the expansion of
another Museum’s “Educational Department”, could serve the “advancement” of science.
Clearly, museums were strongly associated with permanent, public, educational exhibitions.
At least it is crystal clear that this was now the case in England. But the ideas developed by
the Committee of Council on Education in London were evidently not met with any form of
resistance or considered overly strange in the Netherlands, either - or there would have been
no reason to form a Dutch committee tasked with ensuring that instruments were sent in from
the Netherlands and consisting of some of the most eminent scientists of their day.
More to the point, van der Willigen was a member of this commission and the Teyler
Foundation contributed both historical items from its collections and apparatus that van der
Willigen had recently used in his research. (Some of the other members of the commission
were Buys Ballot and Bosscha jr. It was presided over by Pieter Leonard Rijke, who held the
chair in physics at the University of Leiden.246) According to the catalogue, of the instruments
the Teyler Foundation submitted, those van der Willigen had recently used were: a collection
of prisms, six Nobert refraction gratings, artificial magnets produced by van Wetteren, a ring
developed by Elias for the magnetisation of artificial magnets and a vacuum tube for electric
discharge. Instruments that were clearly of historical value were: a large natural magnet
acquired in 1810, a Leyden jar and Leyden battery used by van Marum, two repulsion
electrometers made by van Marum and a terrestrial refractor made by the Amsterdam
instrument maker van Deyl in 1781.248 To top off this selection, the Foundation also
submitted all three volumes of the Archives thus far published.249
In a remarkable demonstration of his historical awareness, in the explanatory caption
accompanying the description of the 18th century Leyden Jar which van der Willigen wrote
for the catalogue to the exhibition, he reported that its “coatings of tinfoil have been renewed
recently; but all is restored in the form in which it was used by Van Marum”.250 In other
words, van der Willigen had had the Leyden Jar restored - not just repaired — shortly before
the Special Loan Collection. This is a clear indication that, while his primary focus was
research and van der Willigen was constantly expanding the Foundation’s instrument
collection to this end, he was well aware of the historical value of the items in the collection
that his predecessors had left him.
In fact the caption in the catalogue explaining why the Archives had been submitted insinuates
that, had it been transportable, the Foundation and van der Willigen would even have been
245 Peter R. de Clercq, “The Special Loan Collection o f Scientific Apparatus, South Kensington, 1876, Part 1:
The ‘Historical Treasures’ in the Illustrated London News,” Bulletin o f the Scientific Instrument Society no. 72
(2002): 11.
246 Catalogue o f the Special Loan Collection o f Scientific Apparatus at the South Kensington Museum, xvi.
247 Ibid., 209 & 229 & 280 & 285 & 322.
248 Ibid., 279 & 319 & 328. Cf. Peter R. de Clercq, “The Special Loan Collection o f Scientific Apparatus, South
Kensington, 1876, Part 2: The Historical Instruments,” Bulletin o f the Scientific Instrument Society no. 73
(2002): 14.
Catalogue o f the Special Loan Collection o f Scientific Apparatus at the South Kensington Museum, 1064.
250 Ibid., 319.