Hidden treasures and stories from our collection
Powerhouse Museum Collection, Gift of the University of Sydney, 1954.
Professor Henry Barraclough was on a mission. He was visiting Europe in 1914 to find interesting engines for Sydney University, and there was one that he was particularly keen to acquire: an early Otto and Langen gas engine, the first commercially successful internal combustion engine.
Sydney Harbour Bridge from Dawes Point, Photography Jean -Francois Lanzarone Powerhouse Museum
What’s the fuss you say?
Well today is the birthday of an Australian icon, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, fondly known as the coathanger. Now eighty years old the Bridge has become a symbol of Sydney and of Australia, its arch shaped structure adding definition to the beautiful harbour and inspiring songs, artworks, photographs and poems like this one by Dorothy Auchterlonie’s (Green) 1940 poem Kaleidoscope:
Twinkle Twinkle little stars
On a million motor- cars
Along the Harbour Bridge so high
Like a coat-hanger in the sky
Launch of the Friendship 7. Image: courtesy NASA
Fifty years ago, in the early hours of February 21, 1962 (Sydney time), NASA astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, on board his Mercury spacecraft Friendship 7. Although two previous Mercury missions had flown brief sub-orbital flights, achieving orbit was an important goal for the US space program at that point in the Cold War contest of the Space Race. The Soviet Union had already launched two orbital missions in its Vostok program: the first had put Yuri Gagarin into orbit as the world’s first space traveller; the second had seen Cosmonaut Gherman Titov spend an entire day in space. To maintain credibility in the Space Race, America had to demonstrate that it, too, had the capability to put an astronaut into orbit.
Continue reading ‘The Friendship 7 Mission’s secret stamp of approval’
This post is part of an ongoing series of energy storage posts by intern Brett Szmajda.
Walking into the Castle Hill stores of the Powerhouse Museum is like walking into the prop warehouse of a Hollywood movie studio. You enter through a nondescript door in a modest, unassuming looking set of buildings, and when you turn around you encounter a cornucopia of steam engines, Mardi Gras floats, flywheels the size of a Mini Cooper, and exotic old X-ray machines that could be used for set dressing in a Frankenstein remake. The air is crisp and clean from the climate control system; the objects are neatly ordered and tagged, on stacks as high as a giraffe. We round a corner, and we come across an object that looks as if a drawer full of hanging files got intimate with the plumbing section at Bunnings.
“Take a look at this.” says Debbie.
“What is it?” I say.
“It’s one of the most promising battery technologies of the last 20 years,” she begins.
The vanadium flow battery.
The vanadium flow battery is a brilliant archetype of the trials and triumphs that accompany research and development. Throughout the development, led by Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, research momentum was maintained by the phenomenal theoretical promise of the battery. Imagine a fully electric car that you could ‘recharge’ in a matter of minutes. Imagine a battery that would let small businesses and power companies store cheap energy generated at night, and use that power during the day, when energy is expensive.
A typical rechargeable battery contains two electrodes of differing material, immersed in a liquid electrolyte; chemical reactions occur between the differing metals of the electrodes, mediated by the electrolyte. But in a flow battery, like the vanadium battery, the principal chemical reactions instead occur between two liquid electrolytes. These electrolytes are pumped past one another (hence the name flow battery) in separate chambers that are separated by a thin membrane. As the two electrolytes flow past one another, they exchange ions (charged molecules) across the membrane, and this generates current.
Close-up of the exterior of the vanadium battery cells, where the electrolytes interact with each other.
To understand the difficulty in designing a flow battery, consider how your lungs extract oxygen from the air, and remove waste carbon dioxide from your body. Inhaling causes thin-walled sacs in your lungs (called alveoli) to inflate. Alveoli are surrounded by clusters of blood vessels; oxygen diffuses across the thin alveolar membrane, into the blood. Simultaneously, carbon dioxide diffuses from your blood into your lungs, to be exhaled. It’s critically important that the blood and air are kept in separate compartments (failure to do so would of course be fatal), and only selected molecules — oxygen and carbon dioxide — are allowed to pass through. Analogously, the challenge of designing a flow battery is making a membrane that will allow current to flow between the different electrolytes, but that doesn’t let the two electrolytes mix. The vanadium battery wasn’t the first flow battery, but it was the first to use the same metal in both electrolyte solutions, thus neatly eliminating the problem of electrolytes mixing across the membrane.
Golfcart powered by vanadium battery, used as a prototype during battery development.
The unique strengths of the vanadium battery are a short recharge time and the ability to store charge efficiently for long periods. The vanadium battery can be quickly recharged at high voltages; or — perhaps most attractively — it can be instantly recharged by replacing the electrolyte with fresh, charged electrolyte. Second, by pumping the electrolytes out of the ‘cells’ (where the reactions take place) and into storage vats, the vanadium battery can sit for many hours, with no self-discharge. These two attributes suggested potential commercial applications. For the consumer, there could be electric cars that you refilled with vanadium ‘fuel’ instead of gasoline; and for the business customer, the vanadium battery could be used as energy storage for the electric grid, allowing arbitrage (charge batteries when electricity is cheap, use battery power when electricity is expensive) and providing stability during intermittent drops in power supply.
Vanadium batteries have found a home providing energy storage for power stations, with several stations world-wide trialling the technology. Unfortunately, the harsh light of reality intruded on the dream of vanadium-fuelled cars — vanadium batteries are expensive to manufacture, have problems operating at low temperatures, and no battery to date has an energy density (that is, power per unit weight) that can compete with the fantastic energy density of petrol. But research continues: scientists have recently boasted numerous improvements to the energy density and temperature tolerance of vanadium batteries. Don’t give up on the dreams of the vanadium car.
This post is part of an ongoing series of energy storage posts by intern Brett Szmajda.
When I say ‘solar power’, most people conjure up images of the thin, iridescent blue panels that make a patchwork quilt out of the roofs of suburban houses. But photovoltaic solar power — converting the sun’s rays directly to electricity — is a youngster in the field of solar energy. Its great, great grandfather is solar thermal power; and with the looming threat of climate change, heat from the sun could be a significant part of Australia’s renewable energy transformation.
Solar Heater by Lawence Hargrave
The principle behind solar thermal power should be familiar to anyone who has ignited dry leaves with a magnifying glass. Solar thermal power utilises the heat from the sun’s rays to do useful work. This object from the collection, invented by Lawrence Hargrave, illustrates the Australian inventor’s early attempts to heat water using the sun’s heat. Sunlight is focused by the conical dish onto the central pipe, which is closed at one end so it can hold a small volume of water. As best as we can tell, this was a hobby or proof-of-concept by Hargrave, who was also making small steam engines. However, around the same time as Hargrave was toying with solar, inventors on the other side of the world were patenting larger solar water heaters that could heat water for a household.
Utility companies have taken these basic small-scale ideas and supercharged them, creating solar thermal power stations to yoke the sun’s heat and turn it into electricity. (There are many alternative designs; most involve a lot of mirrors). For example, ‘power tower’ solar thermal power plants use several hundred mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays on a central tower containing a column of water; this causes the water to boil, producing steam that drives a turbo-generator.
A 'power tower' solar thermal station. Image by Flickr user afloresm, reproduced under Creative Commons licence.
The big problem for solar thermal power generation is that sunlight isn’t constant — a solar thermal plant must contend with clouds, inclement weather, and of course, nightfall. The Solar Tres power plant (a ‘power tower’ design) in Andalusia, Spain has overcome this using a novel form of energy storage: molten salt. Instead of heating water directly, sunlight is concentrated onto a column containing a mix of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate. The heat from the molten salt boils water and turns a turbine, as usual. The advantage of this additional step is that the molten salt can store the accumulated heat (for the electronics junkies in the audience, it’s almost like a ‘heat capacitor’). So when the sun goes behind the clouds or night falls, the heat from the molten salt continues to boil water, turning the turbine and keeping the power flowing. The simple addition of molten salt to the system allows 15 hours of heat storage, meaning that Solar Tres can run around the clock.
Solar thermal plants have been rolled out in a number of locations world-wide, but the uptake in Australia has been limited to two small plants: a 1.5 MW demonstration solar thermal plant has been added to the coal-fired Liddell Power station, and CSIRO has a 0.5 MW solar thermal power station in Mayfield. The biggest recent development was in June 2011, when a 250 MW solar thermal/gas hybrid plant (Solar Dawn) was given 464 million dollars of government funding as part of the Australian Government’s Solar Flagships program. Solar power is a natural fit to the Australian climate, so I’d expect some considerable growth in this sector. Until then, we’re left to wonder why Germany has invested more in solar infrastructure than Australia, when the majority of Australia has more sunshine hours per day than the German average.
Atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Powerhouse Museum Collection.
Dr Alan Walsh had an ‘aha’ moment while gardening in 1954. Straight away, he phoned a friend and said: We’ve been measuring the wrong bloody thing! A CSIRO chemist, he wasn’t referring to delphiniums (blue) or geraniums (red). He was thinking about atoms that emit characteristic colours when heated in a flame – elements such as strontium (red) and selenium (blue).
At that time, the concentration of certain atoms in a sample was determined by measuring the amount of light the sample EMITS when heated in a flame. He realised it would be better to measure how much light of a particular colour (wavelength) the sample ABSORBS. He thought his ‘atomic absorption’ method would be more accurate than the emission method.
Now Walsh had been thinking about this problem off and on for years. In his ‘aha’ moment he realised it was possible to get around the major stumbling block: the need to filter out the emitted light so it didn’t swamp the measuring device.
Walsh soon set up an experiment to test his ideas. It worked brilliantly. With the help of other scientists and technicians, he designed a new type of lamp containing the element to be measured. His technique did prove to be more accurate than the old method – and it was more sensitive, and useful for many more elements. His work led to the creation of a local industry making atomic absorption spectrophotometers (AAS). It also led to scientific and practical advances in many fields as CSIRO scientists developed new techniques and labs around the world purchased the instruments.
One of these instruments was offered to the Museum a few years ago by Tim and Kylie Bennett from Alstonville in northern NSW. They were planning to upgrade to a new AAS for their analytical service lab, and the donation of their old one was very welcome. They told us its original owner was the University of New England, where it had been used for studying domestic ruminant physiology.
Now that more information is available online, it appears highly likely that the ruminants studied were sheep and the instrument was used to show (among other things) that they need copper and zinc in their diet to grow good quality wool. A nice connection to our wool and textile collections!
More information is also available about the work of the Bennetts’ company, Soiltec. As its name suggests, it was involved in analysing agricultural soils, but it also analysed plant material. This work was largely aimed at helping farmers grow crops without adding unnecessary quantities of fertiliser to the soil. A nice connection to our sustainability theme!
Making connections is a vital role for museums. These include connections between objects and ideas; connections between disparate objects; connections between objects and images; and, most importantly, connections between objects, ideas and people. I hope my chemistry-themed blog posts for the International Year of Chemistry have made some interesting connections for you.
Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, 2011
The alarm was set for 5:00am but the rain outside, and five hours sleep, did little to renew the enthusiasm so confidently expressed when Nick’s initially suggested we fly to Tasmania for the day to visit the Museum of Old and New Art ‘MONA’ in Hobart. Four others from the Powerhouse Museum’s Digital and Emerging Tech team were going and that combined with the non-refundable flight and my partner’s ‘you will be going’ looks ensured that somehow by 6.30 I was in line to get on the plane to visit David Walsh’s privately owned museum.
One of the main reasons for the visit was to look at how this museum has integrated handheld technologies into as its core function for interpreting the space, instead of using labels. Another was to look at how Walsh’s personal vision and complete control of the space influenced the kinds of objects selected and the way they were displayed.
We arrived by cab from the airport before the museum had opened and rather than queue up we wandered around the grounds. The first thing that struck me was how from the outside the project looked almost like a military fortress embedded in hillside above the Derwent River. From the outside its all concrete, rusty metal, and vast slabs of sandstone facing off against the suburban homes and family lives that surround it. This seems to reflect the confrontational nature of much of the collection housed in the darkened halls beneath, and its owners delight in challenging the norms and poking a finger into our collective brain matter.
However iconoclasm isn’t a question here for ironically MONA seems to have achieved what many state and federally run institutions find so difficult – it has populist appeal. The displays may be sexually explicit, violent, irreverent, and controversial but more importantly they are, almost without exception, NOT BORING.
What you are in for is made clear from the very beginning of the visit when you are receive your personal i-phone for the tour from the friendly front of house staff. One of the first things you notice after logging in is two buttons on the bottom which gives you information about the objects. One is called ‘gonzo’ and if clicked gives and brief account of how the object was purchased or a visitors or artists impression of the object. The second, with the graphic of a penis, is titled ‘art wank’ and clicking this gives you a detailed account of the object, the artist etc. From personal experience I am almost certain that this sentiment, if not vocalised by visitors to art museums, was often what they actually thought about the kinds of text usually provided. Even better was seeing how many of the mainly elderly audience were happy to read an ‘art wank’ and I couldn’t help feeling they were probably reading more than when it was presented in a more formal way.
One thing I wasn’t so keen on was the set of buttons, which effectively replaced the ‘like’ button concept from Facebook with ‘Love’ or ‘Hate’. I thought these were a bit constrictive as many of the works didn’t conjure up those kind of extremes of emotion in me. But then again the sentiments were quite in keeping with Walsh’s overall feeling his collection was indeed pushing the boundaries, and were extreme.
So where was I – that’s right we’re at the reception area, with I-phone, hand poised to press LOVE or HATE, and feeling like I’m about to take a Dante-esque trip in this high tech lift though the bedrock to some subliminal realms below.
Lift, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, 2011
This first thing that strikes you when you step out of the lift is the Egyptian scale of the space carved out of the rock. It’s like being it some kind of futurist movie set, walkways above a high tech bar which are a precursor to a series of dark recesses and corridors going off in different directions. This is where you really start to get to grips with the tour guide you have in your hand. Press the pink ‘O’ and it gives you your location and lists the artworks nearby. It also allows you to enter your email address at this point and this will record the objects you visit (although this did appear to be linked to whether you actually ‘loved’ or ‘hated’ an object rather than just stood in front of it) and – this was pretty cool – sent the list with pictures though to your email for after your trip. It even lists the objects you didn’t see for another visit – all of which is a great help right now as I write this post.
Basement level entry, MONA, Hobart, 2011
Then its time to set off on the journey and make your way back to the surface. One of the other things you quickly notice is how dark everything is. This one feature makes a tremendous difference to the entire experience and is one which I couldn’t help but feel has the potential to transform any museum.
The other thing I noticed at this point was that although visitors can take photos without a flash the Mona handheld did not have a camera. And even though I tried juggling using my own phone camera, it limited the way I could capture my experience. So bring a good camera if you are serious about documenting your visit.
I guess this will mean having three pieces of tech to carry around which does seem a little unnecessary. Perhaps it would be nice if the MONA phone had a camera so at least you could take some happy snaps and load these into your museum experience to send to your email.
So what about the work? The great thing as I have said was it was interesting NOT BORING, stuff moved, was well lit and even when potentially boring stuff (like pieces of flint) were displayed they were arranged in interesting artistic patterns. Again I think museums could do a lot here in simply looking at how objects are arranged or combined can potentially create a new level of interest. I also liked the way ‘all roads led to Rome’ there were no dead ends or cul-de-sacs to escape from. A great example of this was after looking at the skinned kitty and the hanging wax horse (PXIII by Berlinde De Bruyckere) I rounded the corner to be confronted with a black wall which on closer inspection opened when I pushed on it and brought me back to the main corridor. Interesting, exciting and relies on humans exploring rather than being directed.
Another example of this was the opaque white cube, Queen (A Portrait of Madonna) by Candice Breitz, which was in the centre of the displays on one level. From the outside I could see shadows moving inside and walked around it wondering what was going on when I came upon a door. On opening it and walking inside I was confronted by a bright wall of TV’s which contrasted strongly with the outside ambience, even more jarring was the Capella voices, mostly not very good, singing Madonna hits, kinda in time, but the longer I stayed the more embarrassed I felt watching them.
One of my favourite objects Artifact, by Gregory Barsamian, was a huge metal head lying on its side at the top of some stairs. But it was the flashing light coming from inside that attracted my attention and in this case curiosity was rewarded with a stunning stroboscopic light show inside the coil of wires lining the interior of the head.
I won’t go on to list all the great stuff at the museum as my advice is to see and experience it for yourself. This is a great experience and I’d like to congratulate David for making this one of the more successful and expensive examples of entrepreneurship in the cultural sector. By the time we made our way back to the surface hours has gone by, our group of five had met, wandered off, got lost, bumped into each other at video screenings, seen each other from afar on stairways going to other unknown places and eventually sat down to discuss the experience at lunch.
Overall I liked the way the lines were blurred between art, architecture and the more traditional museum objects, albeit weird and eccentric ones. No thematic schema, no one way to view the works, lots of accident and serendipity, no text, and dark catacombs of walkways and stairs and stone making for an experience I hope other museums embrace. My five hours sleep was rapidly catching up on me as the five of us made our way to Hobart airport and back to Sydney. I can barely remember the plane trip and journey home but I think we all agreed it was a day-trip to remember. Thanks Mr. Earnshaw.
Lynne, Nicholas, Estee and Carlos, Hobart, 2011
Image: Powerhouse Museum
“The final perfection of the storage battery, which I believe has been accomplished, will in my opinion bring about a multitude of changes and improvements in our business and social economy.”
— Thomas Edison
North American Review, 1902
The Clean Energy Act recently passed into law. This carbon pricing legislation heralds a broad transformation in the electricity industry in Australia: increased investment in renewable energy will prompt a revision of our energy infrastructure, and a key focus of this restructuring will involve adding energy storage to the electrical grid.
Energy storage is exactly as the name implies: you take energy, usually electricity, and convert it to another form to save it for later use. The electronics industry has been revolutionised by innovations in energy storage: iPhones, portable GPS, and ultra-slim laptops would not exist without batteries that efficiently convert electricity into chemical energy, and back again. You might expect that the electrical grid, which brings power to homes and industry, has been similarly transformed by these innovations in energy storage. The reality is a very different matter. Bill Gates wonderfully summarised this in a 2010 talk: if we connected all the batteries in the world, including all batteries from the consumer electronic devices I mentioned above, this monumental collection of batteries would be able to store — wait for it — ten minutes of the world’s energy demands.
Given the ubiquity of batteries in our everyday lives, it may seem odd that we do so little grid-scale energy storage. The reason for this is historical: the technology for generating energy outpaced the technology for storing it efficiently. As a result, today’s electricity grid is the ultimate ‘just in time’ system: electricity supply is generated to match demand, as perfectly as possible, as demand varies across each day and season. To facilitate this, some power stations (coal or nuclear) generate continuously 365 days a year, while others switch on and off as demand fluctuates (natural gas or hydroelectric power stations).
As we transition to renewable forms of power generation — e.g. solar and wind — the design of our electricity grid hits a roadblock, because most renewable power plants are intermittent generators. The sun doesn’t shine all the time, and the wind doesn’t blow all the time; and the times when these renewable plants are generating lots of electricity might not correspond to times when we, the electricity-consuming public, are demanding more power. As a result, renewable power plants can’t be on all the time (and compete with coal power) and can’t be switched on and off at will (and compete with demand-following power plants like natural gas). This limits the market uptake of renewable power technologies, and makes the energy they generate more expensive than energy from other sources.
The answer to both these problems? Energy storage. First and most obviously, storing energy when it is in surplus lets renewable power plants deliver power to consumers when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. With energy storage, renewable power plants can compete with continuously operating power stations like coal power plants. Secondly, integrating energy storage into renewable power stations allows the owners of these plants to engage in arbitrage: producing energy when a station can generate it most cheaply, and selling it at a premium when customers demand it. With energy storage, renewable power plants can also compete effectively with demand-following plants like natural gas power plants.
Improving competitiveness in both these ways will mean that renewable power plants are a more attractive investment, and it will drive down the cost of the energy they produce. This is a good thing for both the environment and your wallet.
There are many more benefits to grid-scale energy storage, but I hope I’ve sold you on at least two reasons why storing electricity is a good idea. (Those interested in other applications of grid-scale energy storage should see Appendix C of this 2002 Sandia report — be forewarned that it’s a little dry and technical). In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing a number of blog posts about various forms of energy storage that we might see commercialised within the next ten years. Batteries are just the starting point: ultracapacitors, flywheels, molten metal, compressed air, and even hydrogen are all forms of grid-scale energy storage that are being considered by utility companies worldwide. Bottling the wind will soon be something that we rely on every day.
This piece was written by Brett Szmajda, intern at the Powerhouse Museum.
Powerhouse Collection. Gift of Mr C A Saxby, 1970.
When I decided to feature our rare Whittle aircraft engine in a recent blog post, I entered the term ‘Whittle’ in our database. Data on the engine appeared, along with a photo. Another object also popped up, with little data and no image. Intrigued, I had to check out this ‘early experimental Whittle turbine blade with fir tree base’.
I’d seen turbine blades before, but none as small as this, just three inches (75 mm) long and one inch (25 mm) wide. I didn’t have a clue about the fir tree base, but I did know it couldn’t be made of timber! And I wanted to know more about the donor, Mr C A Saxby, and whether the Whittle attribution was true; if it was, the object could connect us directly with an important and contentious research program, Frank Whittle’s development of the jet engine during World War II.
Powerhouse Collection. Gift of Mr C A Saxby, 1970.
Whittle’s autobiography (Jet: the story of a pioneer) explained that the fir tree base was developed by his team to overcome the problem of wobbly blades. A turbine has a large number of blades attached to a fast-spinning rotor, and vibration at the attachment points reduces both efficiency and lifespan. Whittle’s earliest experiments used the established ‘bulb root’ design, a cylindrical base that fits in a matching slot; in cross-section, this resembles a plant bulb in a round hole. The fir tree base, which has a series of steps that lock the blade into the rotor more effectively, is the standard design today.
But who was Mr Saxby, and how did he come to have the blade? Exam results in Trove gave me his Christian names, Colin Ambrose. A 1935 article turned up a grainy photo of him; the caption placed Saxby as one of a select group to graduate from Sydney University that year with honours in electrical and mechanical engineering.
So Saxby was a bright young engineering graduate at the time Whittle began his research. Did he travel to England and work with Whittle? One of our archivists searched for correspondence related to the object – and scotched that theory. The real story was that Saxby was the Acting Advisory and Inspecting Engineer to the NSW Government and was sent to England to tour various engineering works soon after the war ended. When he was at the Vickers works, an employee offered him the turbine blade. As Vickers made jet engines during the war, with advice from Whittle, it is highly likely that the story of the blade is true.
Curators must be sceptical about provenance because apocryphal stories can develop around objects, often linking them to famous people or events. However, provenance is not the only story. One object can tell many stories, and in this case they include: a problem to be solved; engineers striving to find a solution; the technology this contributed to; use of that technology in warfare and later in civilian aviation; technology transfer from Whittle to Vickers; and the story of Colin Saxby, his contribution to engineering in NSW, and his decision to donate this interesting souvenir to the Museum, to inspire future generations.
A couple of weeks ago the Museum received a request from Peter Miller for access to a collection object. Now this type of access is not always granted as it is resource intensive – an object needs to be moved to a suitable location for viewing and a curator or conservator may need to be on hand to move the object – remember this material is kept by the Museum for the people of NSW in perpetuity and so we want it to last.
However if a genuine benefit to the Museum in the form of new research and information about the object is an outcome then we see this type of request as beneficial. Now this chap wanted to inspect a Canon Canola 1614P, a desk top programmable calculator and not only that he wanted to turn it on. Why? Because Peter was writing (for computer) an emulator and turning it on would help Peter “establish how certain operations worked, when they are not completely described in the operator’s manual.”
I thought this was a great endevour as an emulator of the Canon Canola would let everyone see how it worked without having the real thing and in some form preserve its character for others to enjoy. We checked with conservation of course and bought it up to speed with electronics providing the variac which would introduce current slowly. You can see the result of our efforts below and enjoy Peters vivid description of its operation and peculiarities.
While our digitisation project is well underway, with 80% of collection objects currently listed online, there is much more work to be done. Your donation will assist the Powerhouse to add high quality photographs and full background information for the 50% of online objects with incomplete listings.