Forty Years of Scientific Instrument Studies

Sara J. Schechner, Ph.D. (1988), Harvard University, is Curator Emerita of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University, retiring in 2024 after twenty-four years of service. She has been Secretary of the Scientific Instrument Commission (2003-2013) and currently serves on the Editorial Board for the Scientific Instrument Commission’s series Scientific Instruments and Collections (SICo). She is the author of Time of Our Lives: Sundials of the Adler Planetarium (2019), co-author of Tangible Things: Making History through Objects (2015), and co-editor of Failed Historical Scientific Instruments (2024).Richard L. Kremer, Ph.D. (1984), Harvard University, is Professor Emeritus of History at Dartmouth College, where he taught history of science and curated the institution’s collection of historic scientific instruments. He served as President of the Scientific Instrument Commission from 2018-2021, co-edited Instruments on Display (2014), co-authored Study, Measure, Experiment: Stories of Instruments at Dartmouth College (2005), and has published extensively on medieval astronomical instruments and tables.

• Figures and Tables XINotes on Contributors XVIntroduction: Forty Years of Scientific Instrument StudiesSara J. Schechner and Richard L. KremerChapters1 The 1980sRobert G.W. Anderson2 The Scientific Instrument Commission in the 1990sSara J. Schechner3 The Scientific Instrument Commission in Its Third Decade, 2000–2009Richard L. Kremer4 One Object, Many Worlds: the Scientific Instrument Commission in the 2010sDavid Pantalony5 Transactional Tales: Historiography and Scientific Instrument StudiesBoris Jardine6 Expansion, “Globalisation,” and National TrendsSofia Talas7 Forty Years of Cataloguing Historic Scientific InstrumentsA.D. Morrison-Low8 Forty Years of Permanent and Temporary Exhibitions: a Curator’s MeditationGiorgio Strano