Technology

Science and Industry Collection

This collection contains mechanical, optical, and electronic machines in the everyday world from early telecommunications devices to entertainment technologies and computers.

Includes:

  • one of the largest collections of music boxes in the world
  • the first radar magnetrons
  • LEO 1, the world’s first business computer
  • Harwell Dekatron, the oldest digital computer
  • Birmingham-made components for the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable to the large hadron collider at Cern
  • one of the country’s first industrial robots, and a unique button-making machine used by Buttons Ltd. These machines are 20th century examples of automation, begun by Heaton 150 years earlier.

Image gallery

  • Close up of a figure of a monkey in a pink, satin dress and net head-piece, playing a stringed instrument and looking at sheet-music
  • Figure of a monkey in a pink, satin dress and net head-piece, playing a stringed instrument, placed on top of a wooden box
  • Metal tube and four pronged, metal components
  • A grained wooden box with a clear domed lid, through which you can see metal mechanisms. From the lid shoots a fluted metal horn
  • Cross-section of thick cable on end showing layers of the different metal strands within it
  • An open wooden box showing the internal workings of a music player, it contains cylinders with prongs and a paper roll with punched out squares
  • An object that looks like an open photograph album. On the page is an illustration of a lady in a cream and blue dress, wearing a black and blue, feathered hat. Below the illutsration is a horizontal line, etched into the page
  • An object that looks like a closed, brown leather diary. It has a black, swirling pattern inscribed on the top
  • Small open music box with red and blue piping detail on the top box and the metal mechanism sitting in the lower box
  • Small, wooden music box with geometric cube pattern on the lid
  • Open, rectangular music box with silver mechanisms sittting in the lower box. On the outside of the lower box is an illustration of flowers with a drum and brass instruments in the centre
  • Closed, rectangular music box with flower and instrument painting on the lower lid and a smaller illustration of flowers in the centre of the top lid
  • Open music box with a disc mechanism in the lower lid. In the upper lid is a black and white illustration of a group of partially-clothed children, surrounded by trees and nature. One plays a stringed instrument, another play the piano, and another appears to be singing. On the bottom left of the illustration is the word 'symphonion'.
  • Closed, wooden music box with the word 'Symphonion' painted on the lid in silver, cursive letters