Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Meet the curator- Campbell Bickerstaff

Published by Campbell Bickerstaff 3 Comments Tags: , , .

00z348841Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Campbell Bickerstaff

What is your speciality area?
I don’t know if I have found it yet. A specialty sounds like the dish your best known for. Many would associate curator with expertise which implies a very deep knowledge of a relatively narrow field – like “Building Hexagonal Perovskites Based on Large B-Site Cations for Advanced Materials Applications”.

There is no doubt that knowledge has built up over time spent researching in my designated specialty area – information and communications technology, but I prefer to think of myself as a knowledge broker of some sort – in other words you just get good at research – if I don’t know the answer I know who does or where to find it.

I am usually the one people come to when they need help with technology that is used to capture, store, transmit or receive information. I got very interested in Olivetti for a while as their corporate identity and product design and development methods were highly successful and imitated by other multinationals – especially the work of Macello Nizzoli. More recently I have been researching materials, technologies and social histories tied to audio production and high fidelity.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
12 years

What is your favourite object in the collection?
The Sharp GF-777Z portable stereo cassette and radio player. Commonly referred ton as a boombox or Ghetto Blaster the latter referring to the geographical epicentre of its popular use and a colourful reference to its musical amplification factor. It was also known to many in a more satirical or endearing frame as the Bronx Briefcase.

Two distinct types of portable music devices were used in the 1980s, one being almost the anathema of the other, the Walkman and the boombox. The two were used in very differing ways; the walkman as an extension of the user’s private space; the Ghetto Blaster for performance in public space. This factor in the boomboxes appeal is also driven by the communal nature of their enjoyment outside of the confines of the home where the style and level of the music played may have been prohibited.

The Ghetto Blaster was used to play mix tapes or records (through a dedicated phono input) quite loudly so a small gathering could be entertained. The music was sometimes accompanied by rapping (through a mixed microphone input with built in echo effect). This entertainment may in turn have been augmented with highly stylised street dancing or breaking – a form that borrowed and reciprocated moves extensively from popular culture performers.

The Ghetto Blaster evolved as a consumer product over the last years of the 1970s and its golden age is arbitrarily framed around 1981 – 1985. This particular box is regarded by the boombox cognoscente as the holy grail of all boomboxes. This accolade may be attributed to its size (752mm wide x 379mm High x 166 deep), weight (12.2 kg without 10 D cell batteries), amplification power (90W with 4 amplifiers driving 6 speakers (2 x 16cm super woofer, 2 x 16cm woofer and 2 x horn type tweeters) and dual cassette drives. It also features on the reverse of Run DMC’s debut album.

I also find I am entranced by a variety of materials, objects, designs or technologies. It’s a kind of fascination that is either there or not. Sometimes it is connected to the people that used them and their stories or the function performed or some fabulous design solution. I am also attracted to objects that stir up a certain melancholy or are just damn impressive.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
I am really satisfied by research that tends to clear up my understanding of why something was used instead of something else – research into materials and objects that reveals the superior nature of the product or technology or design and how it came to be the preferred method or solution or choice. An example of this would be the triode – a glass vacuum tube with three elements that amplifies signals – it is also the most linear amplifier known. Understanding of it only came after a thorough investigation of its design, application, testing and appreciation. This appreciation of the triode evolved into a wider study of the enabling technologies, recording practices, production, manufacture and playing of high fidelity records.

editors note: The boombox that Campbell is pictured with is brand new to our collection! so new it hasn’t even finished having it’s paperwork done to be assigned a number. As soon as this happens we will add a link. It’s a little special sneak peak and what could be in our upcoming exhibition on the 1980s! Erika Dicker

Spinning around- The Garrard 301

Published by Campbell Bickerstaff 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

00x11347Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

One of the reasons there is a paucity of ‘ultra fidelity’ components in the Museums collection is that their build quality is extraordinarily high and so they continue to be sought after by users and collectors. One of a handful of audio components of this calibre that has made it into the collection is the Garrard 301.

The 301 is a heavy duty high performance transcription turntable and was first produced in1954 by the Garrard Engineering and Manufacturing Company Ltd of Swindon in the UK. The 301 remained in production until it was superseded by the 401 in 1964. There were a small number of variations of the 301 and this is the first and most desirable ‘schedule 1’ type with silver-grey hammerite finish and a grease bearing. The 301 found its way into broadcasting studios and the homes of high fidelity enthusiasts.

The 301 came onto the scene after the introduction of the long play polyvinyl chloride record (1948) for the consumer market and prior to the introduction of stereo. The only rival to Garrard 301 was the Thorens 124 and these rim drive turntables dominated the upper end of the market for two decades before the appearance of belt drive turntables.

The Garrard 301 drive motor is enormous (not over-engineered just capable of driving a 78 disc with a stylus tracking weight of 10g) and one of the reasons many of these units were discarded – they were never mounted in a high mass plinth that would have rendered the motor ‘noise’ negligible. Nowadays there are a plethora of concerns that service and rebuild 301s and supply plinths in a variety of material including slate, granite and exotic hardwoods.

The lp and turntable have seen the coming of competitive media such as the compact disk and the mp3, new mediums and means of distribution have, at times, almost rung the death knell for the old liquorice pie and it player – however records and turntables persist. For me the Garrard 301 is desirable and a symbol of vinyls persistence.

Meet the curator – Geoff Barker

Published by Geoff Barker 2 Comments Tags: , , .

00z348021Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved
Name
Geoff Barker

What is your speciality area?
Nineteenth century Australian and Pacific photography and the links between science and photography have been overriding interests for a number of years. But one my favourite aspects of the Heritage Industry is the eclectic nature of the work and I have found myself travelling along multiple paths, often at the same time, looking at all kinds of stuff from the arcane to the everyday. As a result dinner conversations tend to be either interesting or deadly dull depending on what you think about heliographs, woodburytypes, Sydney Olympic costumes or the semantic web.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
About 2 ½ years now, but before coming here I was Acting Manager of the St George Regional Museum and curator of the photography collection at the Macleay Museum, at the University of Sydney.

What is your favourite object in the collection?
Too hard. This museum has one of the broadest and most fascinating collections I’ve ever seen but highlights would include the Auzoux botanical models, the multi-wave oscillator made by Angas Jones in a container in his backyard in Dundas, and the early stereo-photographs of Sydney taken by William Hetzer between 1858 and 1863.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
I am really proud of the work I did with the Total Asset Management Team in developing the open storage displays at the Castle Hill Stores. But usually I’m most proud of whatever I happen to be working on at the time and at the moment I’m working on hundreds of un-documented Indigenous Australian and Pacific Island photographs taken in the 1890s. The really good aspect of this project is working on getting copies of these back to the communities where they were originally taken.

Sydney Observatory Star Camera

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Casing for the Sydney Observatory astrograph

Casing for the Sydney Observatory astrograph

I think one of the most underrated curatorial skills is the ability to remain engaged in your current research while at the same time making mental notes of everything that wanders across your field of vision. Sometimes when you are visiting the stores something amazing may catch your eye and open up a new field of discovery but at other times the reverse is true and things you may have overlooked suddenly come alive when you start researching them.

Such was the case with this object. It may look like a length of sewage pipe but it is in fact the partial remains of Sydney Observatory’s astrograph, or star camera, one of the most important cameras ever made in Australia. However my first impressions of this amazing instrument were very different. When I began working on writing significance statements for Sydney Observatory instruments there were a number of objects like this one that had no photograph and were located in our stores some 32 kilometres away.

Sometimes it is essential to look at the object but in this instance I was able to progress without doing this because of the number of articles published by astronomers who had used the ‘star camera’, and one even published an entire book, with photographs, about it.

Star camera set up in observatory dome

Star camera set up in observatory dome

This was my first visual impression of the star camera and as you can see it was a truly formidable looking instrument. Starting in 1890 H. C. Russell and James Short used it to take over 20,000 negatives for the international project to record the positions of stars in the night sky. Even more impressive is the fact that although all the other observatories ordered star cameras from the instrument maker Howard Grubb, Sydney decided to make theirs here in Australia.

Before this almost all major telescopes were imported, but the star camera reflects the confidence Sydney now had in its own engineering firms. In the end only the Grubb lens and a Troughton and Simms tangent screw were made overseas with all the rest made by local Sydney firms and W. I. Masters, the instrument maker at The Sydney Observatory.

However this was a working instrument and not long after this picture was taken it was taken down and moved to new observatory some miles out of Sydney. Different lenses were experimented with and rehoused in the casing. In 1922 it was even packed onto a horse and cart and shipped to Queensland where it was set up at the racetrack in Goondiwindi to observe a solar eclipse.

Finally after a few weeks of research I decided it was time to make the pilgrimage to see this amazing instrument in the stores at Castle Hill. My shock at seeing what remained of the camera felt a bit like seeing a slaughtered animal and I now keep a much more open-mind when working among the objects on the museums shelves.

Meet the curator- Matthew Connell

Published by Matthew Connell 9 Comments Tags: , , .

Matthew Connell with Thacher's Calculating machine

Matthew Connell with Thacher's Calculating machine

Photography by Jean-Francois Lanzarone © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Matthew Connell

What is your specialty area?
My speciality area started as computing and mathematics, but now extends into other areas of IT. It includes calculation and logic, and computing histories, robotics, human computer interaction, new media, gambling machines and digital records.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
I have been at the museum for 17 and half years which some of my friends (esp non museum) think is very disturbing. Of course by museum standards I’m just a newbie.

What is your favourite object in the collection?
My favourite object is the Tote Model built by George Julius between 1908 and 1912 as a prototype and demonstration for prospective customers of his automatic totalisator. It is a beautiful piece of complex machinery which led to the establishment of an Australian company (Automatic Totalisators Limited) that dominated the international tote industry for 67 years. I am also very fond of idea that Australia’s contribution to the history of computing stems as much from our gambling urges as to our military and scientific endeavours.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
The Curious Economist:William Stanley Jevons in Sydney is a modest little exhibition that I curated with Lindsay Barrett from University of Western Sydney. The exhibition explores Jevons time in Sydney, his approach to science and the impact influence of his Sydney sojourn on his later work in Economics. Reading Jevons’ letters and journal and looking at his photographs for the first time was one of the highlights of my time here.

nb: Information on Thachers calculating machine can be found here

The first Atlantic submarine telegraph cable

Published by Matthew Connell 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

If you’re reading this then you are more than likely sitting at your computer using the internet, or if you’re one of the ‘cool kids’, and technologically savvy, then you may be reading it from your iphone on the bus.

But, do you ever stop to think about how we progressed from sending inked letters via ship, horse, and carrier pigeon, to today, when sending a message overseas is as easy as pushing a few buttons?

Check out curator Matthew Connell tell an amazing story about a little piece of cable and the epic part it played in connecting the world.

Meet the curator- Damian McDonald

Published by Damian McDonald 0 Comments Tags: , , .

00z34300Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Damian McDonald

What is your specialty area?
My academic background is English literature, and I’m obsessed with guitars and rock music; however, my path to curator has been more one of Museum knowledge rather than specialist of a particular collection area. I have worked in several departments across the Museum, and as a curator, across several areas of the Museum’s collection: transport, communication, health and medicine, and Australian social history. I’ve become interested in every area I’ve researched.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Seven years

What is your favourite object in the collection?
Ibanez ‘Iceman’ electric guitar. This guitar was used by Australian Indigenous group NoKTuRNL from Alice Springs. This particular model is from the late 1990s, though the ‘Iceman’ guitar design is originally from the mid 1970s.

Ibanez, though obviously a Spanish name, is a Japanese guitar maker. Hoshino Gakki bought the Spanish guitar company Salvador Ibanez in 1935, and began using the name Ibanez to break into the European and US markets in the 1950s. By the 1970s, Ibanez guitars were almost all copies of American Fender and Gibson guitars – the market leaders of electric guitars and basses. The copies were very good – in most cases equaling the original Fenders and Gibos in feel and performance. Artists began using and endorsing Ibanez guitars, and the American guitar makers got nervous. Following a lawsuit over Ibanez copying a Gibson headstock, Gakki began designing unique Ibanez guitars in the mid 1970s. One of these was the ‘Iceman’. The body shape is striking and unconventional, yet comfortable to play – rather like the iconic Gibson ‘Explorer’ – and several musicians have adopted the ‘Iceman’ as their signature axe: Paul Stanley from rock group Kiss, and Steve Miller, who used his ‘Iceman’ on the album ‘Fly Like an Eagle’ in the 1970s, and more recently System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian.

This guitar is an ‘Iceman’ ICJ100WZ, and was co-designed by J, guitarist of the metal band White Zombie in 1996. It features a tremolo system: something previous models did not.

This guitar shouts rock with its design, and is at the same time a serious instrument. The Ibanez story is also one that echoes that of so many rock groups: beginnings in copying or ‘covering’ the masters of their art, and then honing and creating something original and worthy of reputation.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in the Museum?
I guess the diversity of objects I’ve researched: from computer control systems that administered the New South Wales high power electricity grid, to boxes of sex education material and douches, to a polygraph, or ‘lie detector’.

Sweat, Lies and Heart-rates

Published by Damian McDonald 0 Comments Tags: , .

Grass 7D Polygraph machine 2008/184/1

Grass 7D Polygraph machine 2008/184/1

Photography by Damian McDonald © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved.

One of the coolest objects I have acquired for the Health and Medicine collection is the Grass 7D polygraph machine.

A common deus ex machina devise for Hollywood script writers – Polygraph machines, or ‘lie detectors’ are one of those objects that are so embedded in the public consciousness by popular culture that to see an actual example ignites curiosity. Upon seeing it though, one realises that it is the drama surrounding the need for the polygraph that is captivating – not so much the machine itself! Nevertheless, this is an impressive looking piece of scientific equipment, and one’s curiosity immediately switches to ‘how does it work then?’

The polygraph works by recording skin conductance response, evoked cardiac response, reaction times, respiratory response, and orienting response. That is, it measures and records your sweat, pulse rate, breathing, and how much you stammer and think about your answers. These can be very subtle variances though, and the machine and its highly practised operator can read these.

The High Court of Australia is still yet to decide on the use polygraphs as substantial evidence, though it is doubtful they will ever be held admissible in Australian criminal courts. Regardless, there are private companies in Australia providing a polygraph service for use in lie detection. Australian tabloid style current affairs television shows often engage the services of such companies, and there is even a North American ‘reality games show’ television production, ‘Moment of Truth’, that uses the polygraph as the crux of its entertainment.

As important as catching cheating partners, lying criminals, and entertaining the masses are, this particular polygraph was used by researchers at the Psychology department of the Macquarie University in Sydney. And although this machine is yet to make an appearance on the big or small screen, it has featured in medical journals!

Damian McDonald