Monday 4th September

Guest Lecture (view abstract)

Professor Martin Kemp

Toys for boys: instruments as models of nature

Session I A: Historical Observatories and their Instruments I (view abstracts)
(session organiser: Françoise Le Guet Tully)

Dr James Caplan and Guy Boistel

The Marseille Observatory and its instruments

Inga Elmqvist

The Old Stockholm Observatory and its instruments

Dr Antonella Testa

Thematic or chronological arrangement for an exhibition of ancient instruments? The case of the Brera Astronomical Observatory (Milano, Italy)

Dr John Butler

Surviving astronomical instruments in Ireland from the late 18th and 19th centuries

Session I B: Instrument Makers(view abstracts)

Dr Gloria Clifton

Scientific instrument makers and the Royal Mint

Dr Olov Amelin

Instrument maker on the run: a case of technology transfer

Mr Julian Holland

Samuel Charles Tisley and the making of instruments for science Mr Neil Brown

Instrument making to instrument manufacturing: R.W. Paul’s Unipivot galvanometer as a case study

Session II A: Historical Observatories and their Instruments II (view abstracts)
(session organiser: Françoise Le Guet Tully)

Mr Marcus Granato and Claudia Penha dos Santos

The scientific instrument collection of the Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Prof. Dr. Gudrun Wolfschmidt

The Hamburg Observatory and its instruments

Dr Paolo Brenni (with Françoise Le Guet Tully and Anthony Turner)

Astronomical instruments heritage: the example of the observatory of Nice

Session II B: Physics in the 19th and 20th Centuries (view abstracts)

David Pantalony

Bringing sound into the laboratory: the Koenig Analyser

Dr Dieter Hoffmann

The black body - a revolutionary instrument Bart Grob

The historic value of trade catalogues
Session III: The Early Ashmolean Museum (view abstracts)

Dr Jim Bennett

Solomon’s House in Oxford: an introduction to the exhibition

Mr Giles Hudson

Building the Old Ashmolean: fabric and function, 1683-2000

Mr Anthony Turner

‘Solomon’s House’ in Oxfordshire, the origins and early years of Ashmole’s Musaeum in context

Wednesday 6th September

Session IV A: Archives of Instrument Dealers and Collectors I (view abstracts)
(session organiser: Willem Mörzer Bruyns)

Mara Miniati

About the Florentine Strozzi manuscripts

Mr William Andrewes

The legacy of David Wheatland

Mr Willem Mörzer Bruyns

Alain Brieux dealer and scholar in Paris: his archive on scientific instruments

Dr Silke Ackermann

Dormant treasures: The Zinner-Archive at Frankfurt University

Dr Peter de Clercq

The papers of Thomas Henry Court (1868-1951)
Session IV B: Catalogues and Information Technology (view abstracts)

Dr John McKnight

An annotated scientific instruments catalogue for a living museum

Dr Josep Batlló and Francisco Vidal

Inventory of old Spanish seismographs: design criteria and results

Dr Lajos Bartha and Andrea Holló Szilvia

Preliminary report on the catalogue of old astronomical instruments kept in Hungarian collections

Professor Lioudmila Khazova

Specialists’ training based on new information technology for technical museums

Session V A: Archives of Instrument Dealers and Collectors II (view abstracts)
(session organiser: Willem Mörzer Bruyns)

Dr Conrad van Cleempoel

The archives and correspondence of the gentleman and scholar Henri Michel

Dr Silvia de Renzi

Between the market and the academy: R.S. Whipple as a collector of books of science

Dr Bruce Stephenson

The Derek Price Archive at the Adler Planetarium

Session V B: Technologies (view abstracts)

Professor Paul Zoller

Tool of science and stethoscope of the engineer: important steam engine indicators of the 19th century

Professor Rand B. Evans

Morse’s telegraphic indicator and the electro-chronograph

Dr Robert Bud

Between purity and danger: testing milk for penicillin with the Delvotest

Guest Lecture (view abstract)

Professor Robert Fox

‘This gigantic Babylon’: science and the University Museum in mid-Victorian Oxford
Poster Session (view abstracts)

Mr Spiridion Azzopardi
The Florentine spiral thermometer, its construction and use as a scientific instrument

Dr Josep Batlló and Jose A. Canas
A seismic microphone at the Madrid Astronomical Observatory

Dr Helga Beez
Some rare British microscopes in the collection of the Optical Museum in Jena

Dr Jan C. Deiman
The Mensing forgeries - after the Leiden Symposium

Dr Liliane Dorikens-Vanpraet
Early scientific instruments in Bakelite, made by Dr Leo Baekland himself

Professor Maurice Dorikens
The stereoscopic Bioscope disc by Duboscq

Dr Victor Guijarro
The introduction of steam power in Spain

Dr Alena Hadravova and Petr Hadrava
‘Instruments of the Renewed Astronomy’ - new facsimile and translation of Tycho Brahe’s Mechanica

Mr Christopher Hill
Instruments in memoriam

Mrs Inge Keil
Business-relations of the optical workshop of Johann Wiesel and Daniel Depiere in Augsburg in the 17th century

Leili Kriis
Richard Thoma (1847-1923), professor of pathological anatomy of Tartu University 1884-1894, and instruments constructed by him

Ms Ilaria Meliconi
Pierre Louis Guinard, Swiss instrument maker

Mrs Cláudia Penha dos Santos, Alexandre Magno and Marcus Granato
Software for cataloguing scientific instruments

Professor M. Eugene Rudd
Is this the earliest known English telescope?

Dr Hamid Sadsaoud, with Françoise Le Guet Tully
Algiers Observatory and its historical instruments

Mr Rajinder Singh
Raman spectroscopy and its instruments

Dr Keith Snedegar
Nineteenth-century stellar photometers

Session VI A: Meteorology and Physical Sciences (view abstracts)

Dr Anita McConnell

The origins of the marine barometer, 1700-1800

Efthymios Nicolaïdis

We need the best instruments: The response of donors to the appeal of scientists in 19th-century Greece

Miss Jane Insley

On matters meteorological

Session VI B: Mathematics and Astronomy (view abstracts)

Sven Dupré

Galileo, perspective and mathematical instruments

Dr Günther Oestmann

On the history of the nocturnal

Dr Ileana Chinnici

About the Ramsden Circle at the Palermo Observatory

Joerg Zaun

The meridian circles of Pistor and Martins

Thursday 7th September

Session VII A: Instruments in the 20th Century (view abstracts)
(session organiser: Paolo Brenni)

Paolo Brenni

Introduction

Roland Wittje

How can scientific instruments teach the historian about 20th century physics?

Ms Trienke van der Spek

J.W. Giltay: a Dutch instrument maker

Catherine Cuenca

Protection and enrichment of the technical and scientific heritage of the 20th century
Session VII B: Instrument Studies (view abstracts)

Rolf Willach

The development of lens grinding and polishing techniques in the first half of the 17th century

Dr Randall Brooks

Micrometers for reading scale divisions

Dr Suzanne Débarbat

A secondary standard in geodesy: the ‘Règles de Borda’

Dr Allan Mills

Some new sundials

Session VIII A: Natural Philosophy in the 18th Century (view abstracts)

Dr Sofia Talas

Giovanni Poleni and his Experimental Philosophy Theatre

Dr Catarina Isabel Carvalho

Two symbols of power Dr Carlo Triarico

On two unpublished letters by Boscovich regarding his work on optics, and on the finding of a vitrometre
Session VIII B: Museums and Exhibitions I (view abstracts)

Mr Tom Scheinfeldt

Science history and attitudes towards material culture between the wars

Professor Pasquale Tucci

History of science museums, science and technics museums, historical heritage at scientific research institutes, science centres: which future for communication of science and technology and for dissemination of scientific and technological culture?

Professor Vladimir Schurov

From Nizhegorodskaya Radio Laboratories to the Museum of Science

Workshop (view abstract)

Professor Gerard L’E. Turner

Instruments through the microscope

Guest Lecture (view abstract)

Professor Sergey Kapitza

The story and lessons of particle accelerators

Friday 8th September

Session IX A: Practising with Instruments I (view abstracts)
(session organiser: Klaus Staubermann)

Dr Hester Higton

Practical navigation and the Gunter sector

Ms Paola Bertucci

The ‘shocking’ bag: medico-electrical practice in 1760s London

Dr Peter Heering

Practising with reconstructions of Jean Paul Marat’s Perméomètre and Hélioscope

Session IX B: Museums and Exhibitions II (view abstracts)

Dr Ermelinda R. Antunes

The Physics Museum of Coimbra University - brief approach

Tatiana Moisseeva

Petersburg time: the exhibition of different timekeepers, devoted to the new system in Russia, introduced 300 years ago

Miss Frances Yeo

The development of the Manchester Science Gallery

Session X A: Practising with Instruments II (view abstracts)
(session organiser: Klaus Staubermann)

Dr Christine Blondel

Volta’s electrometer and the ‘imperceptible electricity’

Dr Elizabeth Cavicchi

Confusions with coils: Johann Schweigger and learning from loops

Dr Klaus Staubermann

Charles Pritchard’s wedge-photometry at Oxford Observatory

Session X B:Astrolabes and Early Instruments (view abstracts)

Dr Alena Hadravova and Petr Hadrava

The treatise on the composition and the use of the astrolabe by Cristannus of Prachatice

Dr Petr Hadrava

The treatise on the eclipse instrument by Iohannes Schindel, and links between the Prague and Vienna astronomical schools

Dr Peter Plassmeyer

Saxonian astrolabes in the 16th and 17th centuries

Session XI: Collections and Institutions (view abstracts)

Mr Dana A. Freiburger

The John Thompson collection of instruments

Dr Peter Wisse

The philosophical society Diligentia (1793) and its instrument collection

Leonor González

Instruments for physics teaching at a 19th-century Spanish university

Mr Anne C. van Helden

Science teaching in a Dutch provincial town