Author Archive for Debbie Rudder

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Building a better rechargeable battery

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This blog was written by intern Brett Szmajda, who is researching the vital topic of energy storage.

I’m sure that many of you have heard of the Toyota Prius, the Tesla Roadster or the Chevy Volt. Hybrid and fully electric cars are making a big splash at the moment, promising quieter travel with fewer tailpipe emissions. In time, and with improvements in battery technology, it’s conceivable that electric cars might replace gasoline-powered cars.

Would you be surprised if I told you that the battle between electric and gasoline-powered vehicles is over 100 years old?

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

In the early 20th century, gasoline-powered cars and electric cars coexisted. There were even steam cars. Gasoline cars had greater range and could be ‘recharged’ instantly with a jerry-can of petrol, picked up from the general store. But they were loud, smelly, and difficult – even dangerous – to start: the only way to start them was by manually winding a heavy crank shaft, and if the car backfired the crank shaft could break your arm! By comparison, electric cars offered quiet operation and easier start up, with roughly the same limitations that they have today: once you were out of power, you faced a long wait while the car batteries recharged. The pros and cons on each side were roughly balanced, and because of this an interesting innovation race took off.

One big name, fighting for the electric car, was Thomas Edison. Electric cars, back then, ran off rechargeable lead-acid batteries that were essentially the great-great grandfather of the auxiliary lead-acid batteries in today’s cars. Edison thought he could do better, and that brings me to today’s object.

Pictured above is a B-2 nickel-iron (or ‘Edison’) battery. The sectioning of the battery gives us a nice look at its internal workings and lets us see how it compares with later ‘dry cell’ batteries like the Columbia ignitor. B-2 is simply a model number used by Edison to distinguish batteries used for different purposes, much like today’s batteries are AA, AAA, C, D, and so on. This particular model was not used for electric cars (that responsibility fell to its big brother, the A cell); instead, the B-2 was typically reserved ‘for ignition, and other light work’. Other uses for Edison batteries included telegraphy, and running lamps and signals in mines, trains, and ships. Large nickel-iron batteries were even deployed in submarines in World War I.

One of its most desirable features was that the Edison battery was nigh-on indestructable; workers at Edison’s factory performed wear testing by repeatedly throwing the battery out a third-floor window. It was also rugged electrically; the cells could withstand being left uncharged for decades, before working just-like-new after a fresh charge and electrolyte top-up.

Edison batteries were used to run another item in the Powerhouse collection: the Detroit Electric car (see right). In fact, Edison himself owned one. The Detroit electric boasted a range of about 130 km (if driven conservatively) and a top speed of around 50 km/h. There was a surge of popularity for such cars again during World War I, when the price of petrol rose sharply. A public charging point was even installed at Palmer Street in the Sydney CBD, allowing you to recharge your electric vehicle for a modest fee. (I find this revelation quite funny, as a century later, we’re having debates about ‘range anxiety’ on electric cars and how to recharge your electric car while on vacation).

So whatever happened to the nickel-iron battery? Why do we have a lead-acid battery under the hood of our car nowadays? It was probably a combination of things. The electric starter motor was invented in 1911, eliminating one of the biggest drawbacks of petrol cars. Part of it might be the limitations of the Edison battery: it cost more to manufacture than a lead-acid battery; it was greatly inefficient at low temperatures, rendering it almost useless in winter; and it performed poorly in situations where a high discharge or high recharge rate was required. I’d also speculate that the market also played a role: petrol car manufacturers likely had business agreements with certain battery companies. Because of its wide range of other uses, the Edison battery was produced for over half a century, with production only stopping after Edison Storage Battery Co. was acquired by Exide Batteries.

So if you happen to be digging around in the grandparents’ tool shed and find an old Edison battery, you can tell your friends that you’ve found a part of one of the first electric cars. Hell, if you feel like fun, replace the electrolyte, and try (carefully!) giving it a charge. It’ll probably still work.

Technology and 9/11: aircraft vs skyscrapers

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Gift of representatives of the NYPD and FDNY to the Premier of NSW the Hon Bob Carr MP, presented to the Powerhouse Museum, 2002.

Sunday 11 September is the tenth anniversary of that horrendous and highly symbolic event, the ramming of two aircraft into skyscrapers in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington DC. This portion of a girder cut from one of the World Trade Center buildings, distorted and blackened by fire, serves as a poignant, physical reminder of the event.

The relic was brought to Australia by a group of New York fire fighters and police officers who took part in the rescue and clean-up. They visited Sydney in February 2002 as guests of the NSW government and donated this object to the Premier in honour of the ten Australians who died alongside 3000 others that day. Its value as a museum object is symbolic, commemorating not just those ten but all who died, including those on board a fourth plane that did not reach its target, and all who took part in the rescue and recovery operation.

The hijackers aimed to create carnage, havoc and fear. Symbolism determined their choice of targets: the centre of world capitalism and the nerve centre of US defence. Symbolism also determined their choice of weapon: three airliners carrying large quantities of jet fuel, perhaps sourced from the Middle East’s massive oilfields.

The two skyscrapers were symbols of American technological leadership and economic success, soaring above the land and casting shadows on the water. They were made of steel, concrete and glass, all materials known and used since ancient times. They were clad with aluminium, a material that only became widely available in the twentieth century – thanks to Charles Martin Hall, the American who devised a process to separate it cheaply from its ores.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Coles Myer Pty Ltd, 1997

Skyscrapers embody a good deal of engineering know-how. A key technology is the elevator with safety brake, invented in 1853 by another American, Elisha Otis. The Otis style governor above spent its working life in a shed perched on top of a Sydney retail building, ready to activate a brake if the lift it was connected to started falling too fast. Buildings could not be built more than a few storeys tall before the advent of the safety lift.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Scott Czarnecki, 2004.

The electric lift motor is another key enabling technology for multi-storey buildings. This lift motor with integrated winch spent its working life in a shed at the top of another Sydney retail building, reliably starting at full load whenever someone pushed a button and unerringly stopping the lift level with the required floor. It was made in England around 1915, but the firm that made it was eventually taken over by Otis Elevator, the world’s largest lift company.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mr and Mrs E.A. and V.I. Crome, 1984

The first successful powered flight was achieved by two Americans, brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, in 1903. Many other researchers had been trying to develop flying machines, including Australia’s own Lawrence Hargrave, whose box kite (below) probably contributed to the design of the Wright flyer’s wings. Hargrave also investigated animal movement and experimented with model ornithopters, making several different engines and a turbine to power them. Having put so much of his time and energy into pursuing the dream of flight, he expressed the hope that aircraft would not be used as war machines.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Lawrence Hargrave, 1915.

Of course, it was not long before planes were used in warfare. They grew bigger, stronger and faster, but there was a limit to how fast reciprocating engines could spin propellers. In the 1930s and 40s in England, Frank Whittle was the first to develop gas turbine engines, which could move planes much faster than piston engines. Engineers in Germany and America also developed turbine engines. The engine below was made by Whittle’s company, Power Jets Ltd, in 1943.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of the Ministry of Supply, United Kingdom, 1951.

The American-made turbo-engine aeroplanes hijacked on 9/11 were not sinister war machines bristling with gun turrets and bombs, but sleek civilian craft similar to the Boeing 767 depicted by the model below. Their fuselage and wings were clad, like the twin towers of the World Trade Center, with that modern, lightweight, corrosion-resistant product of American ingenuity, aluminium.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Just as we rarely think about the technology that enables skyscrapers to exist, we rarely worry about the civilian planes whizzing around our skies. Bringing the two together on that day in 2001 was a shocking act that changed the world, opening new fault lines and accentuating old enmities. Ten years later, the fault lines have stretched around the world and destroyed or disrupted thousands more lives. And while technology has made our lives more interesting, healthy and comfortable, it is certainly a two-edged sword in the hands of those with enmity in their hearts.

History week: science delivers our daily bread

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Powerhouse Museum Collection.

It’s International Year of Chemistry and History Week, which this year has food as its theme: a perfect time to meet Frederick Bickel Guthrie, the chemist on this medal. Guthrie worked with a better-known Australian scientist, William Farrer, to develop strains of wheat that were resistant to both drought and rust, a fungus that damages grain and reduces yields. Rust is causing problems in the wheat industry again today.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

This sample of rusted wheat was collected in 1890. Farrer’s Federation wheat variety helped the wheat industry revive in the following decade. This is why he featured on our first $2 banknote alongside drawings of wheat stalks.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Farrer systematically crossed wheat varieties and selected for desirable qualities, but he only grew small plots of each type. In a world-leading research program, Guthrie made a miniature roller mill to produce flour from the small quantities of grain that Farrer produced. He carefully analysed the flour’s gluten, bran and pollard content, noted its strength and colour, baked tiny loaves of bread from it, and advised Farrer which varieties were most nutritious and gave the best quality bread.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Here are the wheat stalks that artist Gordon Andrews used as models for his banknote drawing. They are in very good condition, stored in our archives along with his sketches. The fact that wheat can be stored for long periods helps make it a valuable commodity and a staple crop in many countries.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Wheat also featured from 1938 to 1966 on our pre-decimal currency, on the threepence coin. Like the $2 note, it is a testament to the value of this crop to our daily lives and national economy.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Guthrie popped up again when I decided to research the use of instruments like this chondrometer, made by Henry Simon in England. Despite the fancy name, it’s simply a device for measuring a small volume of grain (in the conical vessel) and weighing it by hanging the little bucket from the steelyard, whose base screws into a hole in the top surface of the box: a neat, portable unit for checking the density of a sample taken from a wheat crop. Density is a guide to wheat quality and determines the space required to store and transport the crop.

I was surprised to discover that this instrument is so crucial to wheat economics that in 1918 the NSW government set up a ‘chondrometer investigation committee’. I wondered if Guthrie was a member of this body – and one contemporary news item confirmed that he was. The committee considered the available chondrometers and approved a model that combined various features of those on the market.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Donated by Tooth and Company Ltd under the Australian Government's Tax Incentives for the Arts Scheme, 1986.

Back in the basement, I discovered a NSW standard chondrometer, with the name of Sydney maker AL Franklin faintly visible on the steelyard. This instrument complies with the main recommendation of the committee: to cover a smaller range of densities, from 32 to 75 pounds per bushel (compared to 13 to 70 on the Simon chondrometer and 0 to 80 on others) and thus give more precise measurements.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Our collection includes objects that represent every facet of the wheat industry and the everyday use of wheat products, from ploughs to harvesters, from a wheat wagon to grinding mills, from flour bags to toasters. This 1880s model shows all the processes that take place in an automated flour mill. I was intrigued by the final step: the ‘silk dressing machine’ above the bags. It turns out that silk is still the best material for dressing (sifting) flour. One more search was in order: do we happen to have any dressing silk in our collection? The answer is yes: two swatch books with silk of varying mesh sizes! The moire effect makes them a bit tricky to photograph, so here is a small sample of one of them.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of David Sheedy, 1991

Science Underground: mystery object

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Collection: Powerhouse Museum

This beautiful brass object is one of a nice selection of science and technology artefacts that visitors will see on our curator-led basement tours during Ultimo Science Festival.

Can you identify it? It has the words ‘English made’ stamped into it, but no maker’s mark. We know what type of object it is, but would be grateful if anyone can tell us the maker’s name or other details.

Science Underground: limelight burner

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Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mr A W B Burns, 1972.

Chemists have not seen much of their discourse become part of popular culture, but the symbol for water is a notable exception. In advertising speak, H2O has a high recognition factor. It has been adopted and adapted for a plethora of cool brand names, a few geeky jokes and a successful Australian TV show and spin-off movie.

The symbol is a very neat way of summarising what we know about the composition of pure water. In each and every molecule of this ubiquitous substance, two hydrogen atoms are bound to one oxygen atom. Amazing stuff: we know from experiment that two invisible gases react to give this vital liquid; again from experiment, we know that two volumes of hydrogen react with one of oxygen; and we know, based on a wealth of careful experimentation and robustly debated theory, that this ratio is embodied in tiny invisible molecules made up of even smaller atoms.

What does this have to do with today’s Powerhouse Collection object, a limelight burner? Its two inlet pipes are designed to funnel hydrogen and oxygen gases towards the pointy end, where their reaction generates water and heat. The flame is directed towards the vertical spike, which is designed to hold a ball of quicklime (calcium oxide). Water reacts with quicklime, producing even more heat and a very bright light.

The use of limelight burners as theatre spotlights led to our saying ‘to be in the limelight’. This burner is one of many objects that will star in Science Underground, curator-led tours of our basement store during Ultimo Science Festival, a feast of activities on offer from 16-28 August 2011.

What is plastic? a chemical controversy

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Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Bakelite is rightly famous as the first fully synthetic plastic (defined as an organic material that can be moulded under heat and/or pressure). Its name immortalises its inventor, Leo Baekeland. The Museum’s bust of this balding moustachioed chemist and industrialist, made from a translucent red version of his phenol-formaldehyde resin, also celebrates his place in technological history.

Unfortunately, we have no bust of Hermann Staudinger, the balding moustachioed Nobel-Prize-winning chemist whose work underpins the scientific understanding of plastics. His story is one of heroic struggle against orthodox thinking and the eventual acceptance of his revolutionary idea: that plastic materials consist of long chain molecules called macromolecules.

Staudinger first formulated this theory in 1920, in opposition to the theory that plastics consist of aggregates of small molecules. Organic chemistry had thrown much light on naturally occurring substances, and it had done this by extracting and studying a wealth of small molecules of fixed, reproducible composition. Staudinger’s huge macromolecules, made up of variable length chains of atoms, did not fit neatly into this picture.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Humans have used natural plastics for thousands of years, moulding and carving them to make useful and decorative objects. This back-comb made from horn in Scotland in the late 1800s is an elaborate example. It is stained to look like tortoiseshell, a more prized material than horn.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Gift of Messrs Galalith Hoff & Co, 1933

These casein products were made in 1933. Made from milk protein and formaldehyde and easily pigmented, casein was patented in Germany in 1899. It was one of several semi-synthetic plastics that initiated the plastics age in the nineteenth century: Parkesine, xylonite and celluloid were all derived from cellulose; and vulcanite and ebonite were made from rubber.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Gift of Commonwealth Moulding Co, 1945

Cellulose acetate was another early plastic. This spectacle frame is a typical product made from cellulose acetate, which can also be extruded to make fibres. Huge quantities of cellulose are used to make rayon; if you wear clothing made from this semi-synthetic fibre, remember that it started life as a tree!

Razor Scuttlebug. Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Gift of Funtastic Ltd, 2006

When you contemplate the range and usefulness of plastic objects today, I hope you remember Staudinger’s story. He studied rubber, cellulose and synthetic polymers, devising ways to measure the mass of their molecules and designing experiments to discover their chemical reactions. His wife and co-worker, Magda Staudinger, applied a range of microscopy techniques to studying macromolecules. All the evidence his team accumulated eventually convinced other chemists, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1953, a third of a century after he proposed his revolutionary idea.

Coal tar, carbon chemistry and colourful dyes

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The periodic table is the ultimate scientific infographic: very neat and highly informative, it summarises large amounts of information and it’s packed with ideas. Crucially, it helped chemists predict the properties of elements and compounds that were unknown when the table was created.

One element stands apart from all the others in the number of compounds it can form: carbon (because its atoms can combine to form chains and rings that incorporate other elements in numerous permutations). Here is a rather chaotic old infographic, drawn by father and son analytical chemists Benjamin and Wallace Nickels, that uses the metaphor of a genealogical tree to attempt to bring some order to the complexity of carbon chemistry. It depicts, perhaps too literally, a tree with massive trunk and numerous major and minor branches.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

In an age when most useful carbon compounds are derived from petroleum, it seems curious that the trunk of the tree is boldly labelled COAL TAR. This sticky black by-product of the coal gas and coke industries was a major feedstock for the chemical industry from the 1850s, but its use declined after 1920 with the rise of the petrochemical industry. From 1960 the switch from coal gas (a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane, manufactured from coal) to natural gas (naturally occurring methane) for use in homes and industry all but killed off the remaining coal tar industry.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum

However, coke continued to be made because it is still used in the steel industry. Chemists have worked out numerous ways to re-use the wastes from this industry and thus improve its economics while reducing its environmental footprint. Some of these methods were known to the nineteenth century coal tar industry.

The prospect of ‘peak oil’ has also led to renewed interest in returning to the use of coal as a feedstock for the chemical industry. Perhaps a carbon tax will help make this an attractive option compared to burning coal to create power. Would locking up a substantial portion of the carbon in coal in long-lasting plastic products be preferable to spewing that carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and thence into the ocean as carbonic acid? Or would we continue to use plastic to make throw-away junk, a proportion of which ends up contaminating the ocean and reducing its potential to support life?

Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Gift of Mr J Barton Faithfull, Agent General for NSW, 1903.

Coal tar links many objects in the Powerhouse Museum’s diverse collection: gas lamps, stoves, irons and engines; samples of coal, iron and steel; synthetic dyes plus textiles and clothing coloured with them; and synthetic perfumes and pharmaceuticals. The photo above shows some dyes on display in our Chemical attractions exhibition, where they illustrate the story of the beginning of the chemical industry in 1857: when chemistry student William Perkin tried to synthesise quinine and instead created some blackish gunk, he investigated it (rather than chucking it out), discovered that what he had made was a mauve compound suitable for dyeing fabric, and set up a factory to mass-produce it.

Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Gift of Mr J Barton Faithfull, Agent General for NSW, 1903.

The dye industry developed first in England, but Germany’s chemists soon took its industry to world leadership. This carpet dye catalogue was made in Germany in 1899 by Meister Lucius & Bruning, which was later renamed Hoechst, merged with other firms to form the giant company IG Farben, reverted to the name Hoechst when IG Farben was demerged in 1951, grew to become a major pharmaceutical firm, and is now part of Sanofi-Aventis.

Through companies such as Hoechst, chemistry played a huge role in economics, politics and war during the twentieth century. A new battleground opened after the manufactured gas industry closed, as the sites of old gasworks became available for development and the need to remove dangerous coal tar compounds from the soil became obvious. Perhaps today’s chemists need to study our old tree chart to discover what nasty substances are in the soil and groundwater at sites such as Barangaroo in Sydney.

The energy efficiency paradox

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Common sense sometimes lets us down. For instance, common sense tells us that, if we improve energy efficiency, we will use less energy. Sadly, this truism does not always hold. In its place, we have Jevons’ Paradox, first expounded in 1865 by Professor William Stanley Jevons:

‘It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.’

Powerhouse Museum Collection

As a young man, Jevons spent the years 1854 to 1859 as an assayer at the Royal Mint’s NSW branch. He purchased this telescope in Sydney. A neat symbol of Jevons as both scientist and observer of human behaviour, it is on display in our exhibition ‘The curious economist: William Stanley Jevons in Sydney’. It is made of brass, and its outer draw (the cylinder into which the other six draws fit telescopically) is covered with shiny black material originally described in the museum’s database as ‘moulded black plastic tape, presumably added in the early twentieth century’. It is more likely that the material is baleen and that it was an original feature of the telescope. I wonder how many whales died to provide tough, flexible baleen to decorate telescopes or to make ‘whalebone’ stays for corsets, boots or umbrellas – plus whale oil that was burned to provide light.

Today we don’t harvest these materials from whales, but there is an urgent need to burn less fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas). Improving energy efficiency seems an obvious first step: quick, easy and relatively cheap. Thus it is vital that we understand why improved energy efficiency can lead to higher, rather than lower, energy consumption. Through such an understanding, I hope that we can escape the Paradox and truly reduce our energy use – and our energy bills.

On returning to Britain, Jevons wrote a book titled ‘The coal question’ to promote his ideas on resource use, economics and social progress. That book includes the words quoted above, the result of his consideration of improvements to steam engine efficiency, which had led to higher sales of steam engines and hence to higher coal use across the economy.

Jevons was referring explicitly to industrial use of energy, rather than to domestic use, which he stated was ‘undoubtedly capable of being cut down without other harm than curtailing our home comforts, and somewhat altering our confirmed national habits.’ He could not have imagined how energy-hungry our domestic habits would grow, with reticulated electricity allowing us to desire much more from the burning of coal than ‘the enjoyment of a good fire’.

There are many measures that we can take to reduce domestic use of energy today. These include insulating roofs and walls, installing energy-efficient lights and appliances, designing homes with eaves or awnings to shade windows in summer, and fitting heavy curtains and pelmets for use in winter.

But behaviour is just as important as design, and it is through our behaviour that we give in to, or overcome, Jevons’ Paradox. We can take the benefit of home insulation by not bothering to don clothes appropriate for the season, or as reduced energy use for heating and cooling. We can leave energy-efficient lights burning, telling ourselves it doesn’t matter because they use so little power, or reduce our energy use by switching them off when we don’t need them. In summer we can lower awnings to shade our windows each day, or turn up the aircon and chew up extra energy. In winter, those curtains are no use unless they’re drawn across our windows each evening. And we can reward ourselves each day with the enjoyment of a long hot shower, or save both water and energy by showering just long enough to get clean.

Studies have shown that people with small cars tend to drive further than those with large cars. Chicken and egg, or Jevons’ Paradox? It’s hard to tell, but if you’ve switched from a large car to a small one, have you actually used less fuel? How many of your purchasing and behavioural decisions are informed by a desire to reduce your carbon footprint?

If you would like to take part in discussion of energy issues, hear some interesting talks, compare our early electric car with a visiting group of modern ones, see other amazing energy-related objects, and enjoy fun energy-related activities, come along to the Powerhouse Discovery Centre’s ‘Power and Energy’ Open Day on Saturday 14 May.

400th anniversary of the King James Bible

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Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Mrs Gwenda Abbott, 1981.

The King James Bible was first published on 2nd May 1611. It was the first authorised English-language version of the Bible. James Cook carried such a Bible with him on his voyage to Terra Australis, and many of the early British settlers would have brought this version of the Bible with them. Most would have known selected verses and carried the words in their minds as well as on paper.

The first king of Great Britain, James I, had commissioned the translation in 1604, and over 40 scholars contributed to the new version. They drew on the work of earlier translators (such as William Tyndale, who was condemned to a fiery death for his efforts) as well as going back to the original Hebrew and Greek texts. The scholars worked individually before comparing notes and agreeing on each verse and chapter. Poet Andrew Motion has made the following comment on the resulting work.

“The King James Bible is a cornerstone of our culture and our language. Whatever our faith, whatever we believe, we have to recognise that the rhetorical power of this book, and in particular its power to fuse history with poetry, connects at the most fundamental level with our own history and poetry.”

This particular Bible was owned by Edgar Leslie Bainton, a musician and composer who became director of the NSW Conservatorium of Music in 1934 and strongly influenced music performance and music education in NSW. The Bible was a wedding present from his father (a minister of religion, as were all his brothers) and mother (sister of the principal of a theological college) in 1903. It was donated to the Museum by one of his daughters.

Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Given Bainton’s family background, it is not surprising that he composed music for several hymns and conducted the St Matthew Passion in Sydney each Easter from 1939 until his retirement in 1946. He also loved poetry, and the language of the King James Bible would have been highly significant in his life. The battered state of the book’s cover suggests it was well used, but, apart from his parents’ message near the front, there are no pen or pencil marks on the pages: Bainton was not the type of bible student who marks favourite verses or writes annotations beside contentious passages.

Marie Curie and the radioactive challenge

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Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of the Estate of Robert Bennett, 2008.

Why is 2011 the International Year of Chemistry? To celebrate the achievements of chemists, inspire people with chemical ideas – and to mark the centenary of Marie Curie‘s Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Curie was a remarkable scientist. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, and won the 1911 Chemistry prize on her own for the discovery of radium and polonium, two rare radioactive elements. Her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frederic Joliot-Curie won the Chemistry Nobel in 1935 for creating new radioactive elements, making the Curie family the most successful in the Nobel pantheon. (Checking the legitimacy of this metaphor, I read that the bodies of Pierre and Marie were disinterred in 1995 and placed in the Pantheon in Paris.) Marie and Pierre were further honoured when a unit of radioactivity was named the curie and a radioactive element was dubbed curium.

The medallion above depicts Röntgen (who discovered X-rays), Becquerel (who discovered radioactivity), and Pierre and Marie Curie (who jointly studied radioactivity and recognised it as an intrinsic property of certain elements). The medallion is set into a wooden plaque along with a plate bearing the text: “To commemorate the centenary of the discovery of the X-rays in 1895. Presented by the estate of Robert Bennett (1927-1994).” Radiologist Robert Bennett left a bequest that allowed the Powerhouse to acquire a large collection of X-ray machines and related material.

Imagine being a chemist in the last years of the nineteenth century, part of an enterprise that is making continual progress within an established paradigm. The 60+ known elements fit quite neatly into Mendeleev and Meyer’s periodic table. Spectroscopes have even provided glimpses of the elemental composition of stars. Modern chemistry has dismissed the alchemists’ long search for a method to transmute lead into gold, and the elements are instead considered immutable. Now some elements are discovered to be radiating energy: the paradigm faces a severe challenge.

Scientists rose to the challenge. Research into radioactivity led to discovery of the atomic nucleus, unearthing of additional elements and synthesis of elements unknown in nature (transmutation undreamt by any alchemist). It also led to new treatments for many diseases, and new techniques for use in mining, manufacturing and many other fields.

Powerhouse Museum Collection. Gift of Ms Margaret Manny, 2008.

Marie and Irene both spent long hours in their labs, and radiation probably caused both their deaths. During World War I they equipped ambulances with X-ray machines and trained women to run them; Marie also regularly pumped the radon gas emitted by radium into small glass tubes for insertion into tumours, an early example of radiotherapy. The photo shows radon needles from a batch used at Sydney Hospital in the 1950s.