"The change of scale of instruments in the 20th century, with the emergence of 'Big Science' and the development of new high-tech sectors such as robotics, astrophysics and medical imaging remind us of the challenges facing scientific instruments and the route taken since Arsenius's astrolabe."
The recently renovated museum is broken up into several sets of exhibits: scientific instruments, materials and their fabrication, construction, communications, and energy. One darkened room hosts a theater of automata, including one that once belonged to Marie-Antoinette. There is even the original model of the Statue Liberty on which the sculptor Frederic Bartholdi based its much grander New York counterpart.
The museum's final exhibit is housed in the grandiose Saint Martin des Champs, and features early automobiles and aircraft, including Marcel Leyat's "Hélica" airplane car, as well as Foucault's original pendulum, which was used to definitively prove the rotation of the earth and once hung from the dome of the Pantheon. Several times a day,museum staff members gather groups of curious visitors around the pendulum to explain exactly how it works, and how Foucault used it to prove what he did.
And don't miss their shop ... we brought a number of things home that engage us including their Guide to the Collections.
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