Apr 06
Sir William Bragg, the eminent physicist, once stated, “The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” The profundity and truthfulness of this statement seems nowhere more relevant than in the National Science Museum in London – one of the country’s most loved historical institutions. As part of the National Museum of Science and Industry, the Science Museum is more than a tourist attraction for London’s many visitors: it preserves some of the world’s most impressive scientific artefacts, while constantly showcasing new talent and the latest in scientific innovations from across the globe.The Science Museum first opened in 1857 from the collection of the Royal Society of Arts, as well as surplus items from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to promote the achievements of science and technology. Initially created as part of the South Kensington Museum, the museum went through several incarnations before being officially titled the Science Museum in 1885.Today, the Science Museum holds over 300,000 exhibits. Its most famous items include Stevenson’s Rocket, an early steam locomotive built by George Stevenson in 1829, James Watson’s model of DNA and Charles Babbage’s Difference engine, a special-purpose mechanical digital calculator. The Museum itself is made up of a series of permanent and temporary galleries, including ‘Space’, a historical gallery that tells the story of human space exploration, ‘Flight’, which contains a number of aeroplanes and helicopters, and ‘Making the Modern World’, a new gallery which houses some …