Sci & Educ

DOI 10.1007/s11191-011-9391-y

Reading Instruments: Objects, Texts and Museums

Katharine Anderson Melanie Frappier Elizabeth Neswald

Henry Trim

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Science educators, historians of science and their students often share a curi-
osity about historical instruments as a tangible link between past and present practices in
the sciences. We less often integrate instruments into our research and pedagogy, con-
sidering artefact study as the domain of museum specialists. We argue here that scholars
and teachers new to material culture can readily use artefacts to reveal rich and complex
networks of narratives. We illustrate this point by describing our own lay encounter with an
artefact turned over for our analysis during a week-long workshop at the Canada Science
and Technology Museum. The text explains how elements as disparate as the military
appearance of the instrument, the crest stamped on its body, the manipulation of its
telescopes, or a luggage tag revealed the objects scientific and political significance in
different national contexts. In this way, the presence of the instrument in the classroom
vividly conveyed the nature of geophysics as a field practice and an international science,
and illuminated relationships between pure and applied science for early twentieth century
geologists. We conclude that artefact study can be an unexpectedly powerful and acces-
sible tool in the study of science, making visible the connections between past and present,
laboratory and field, texts and instruments.

K. Anderson
Science and Technology Studies, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
e-mail: kateya@yorku.ca

M. Frappier (&)
History of Science and Technology Programme, University of Kings College, 6350 Coburg Road,
Halifax, NS B3H 2A1, Canada
e-mail: melanie.frappier@ukings.ca

E. Neswald
Department of History, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Ave, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada
e-mail: eneswald@brocku.ca

H. Trim
Department of History, University of British Columbia, 1873 East Mall,
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1, Canada
e-mail: hdstrim@hotmail.com

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1 Reading Artefacts: Whose Method?

Many science educators, not only historians of science, share a fascination with his-
torical scientific instruments as a link to past practices, yet we very rarely actually
come into contact with them. We encounter old instruments as clutter in laboratory
corners and basements, or as trophies behind glass on display. Our texts are frequently
accompanied by engravings, photographs and schematic diagrams of instruments, it is
true, and many of us seize every opportunity to visit instruments on display and gaze at
objects that we have only read about and perhaps could not even identify without the
card besides them. Yet actually touching, manipulating, using a historic instrument, that
is, experiencing it as a material object, is something few of us have the opportunity
to do.
The study of the material objects and artefacts of science is still generally understood
as a highly specialized approach requiring both expertise and access to instruments. A
week-long workshop at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology (CMST) in
Ottawa in the summer of 2009 proposed instead that artefact-based studies should be a
standard tool in the repertoire of scholars and teachers of the history of science and
technology. The workshop brought together a diverse group of interested neophytes from
many academic backgrounds and an equally diverse group of experts: curators, librarians,
historians who work with historical reconstruction of instruments and historians involved
with teaching collections. Participants worked in small groups and built case studies of
individual objects. In the authors case, we spent our time in the company of a large,
heavy, dull green, angular geodesic instrument that we will describe further below. This
remarkable workshop enabled us to explore a diverse array of artefacts and it encouraged
at the same time intellectual analysis and conscious subjective experience of instruments
as objectsmaterial, puzzling, cooperatively revealing themselves or stubbornly
inconclusive.
The process of working with and thinking about this instrument has made us more
conscious of the power of artefacts to illuminate the complications of narrative, evidence,
and experience. This article summarizes our encounter with the artefact and considers its
significance for ourselves as both teachers and researchers. It proceeds much as our
encounter did: After reviewing the Winterthur model on which our analysis was based, we
focus on the physical characteristics of the artefact. We then consider how this analysis led
us to at least three different stories about the instrument and its use, which are at the same
time narratives (often contested ones) about the science of geodesy. We conclude by
reflecting on the methods of material analysis opened up by this workshop and extended in
subsequent classroom experiences. Far more than anecdote or biography, the study of a
material object engages both students and teachers with the context of science and builds
understanding. Because it so effectively conveys a sense of scientific practice and aims,
disciplinary styles and contingency, it is a practical means of engaging students as well as
deepening our own understanding (Stinner 1994). In tracing our encounter with a specific
scientific instrument within the framework of the CSTM workshop and beyond, this essay
follows a double intention. On the one hand, we present the stories emerging from our
study of the artefact. On the other, we aim to convey aspects of the pedagogical process,
the step-wise accumulation of layers of knowledge from the unknown artefact to the
cultural analysis, and to convey some of the excitement and productive confusion that
artefact study can generate.

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2 Approaching the Object

2.1 The Winterthur Model

The Winterthur Model of E. McClung Fleming has long been an influential guide for the
analysis of material artefacts, and it provided the framework and guidelines for the CSTM
workshop (Fleming 1982).1 The model, first published in 1974 and named for the deco-
rative arts museum in Delaware where Fleming worked, proposes that researchers perform
four analytical operations on an object that has undergone a detailed process of historical
and material description. The analytical operations are based on several basic properties of
the artefact: its history (including its provenance, maker, etc.), materials, construction
(including techniques of manufacture), design (structure, form, iconography, ornament)
and function (intended and unintended uses). The first analytical operation aims to
establish these properties and includes both the study of the material object itself and
documentary evidence pertaining to it. Its function is description (with words or images),
classification and authentication. The main questions this initial operation seeks to answer
about the artefact are: what is it?, is it genuine?, what are its physical characteristics?
(Fleming 1982, p. 167). The second analytical operation evaluates the artefact by con-
sidering workmanship, aesthetics, manufacturing decisions and other factors. This stage of
evaluation can also include a material contextualizationfor example, seeking to establish
relationships to similar objects and to contemporary standards of precision, workmanship
and quality.
Identification and evaluation are the most strongly material-object-oriented of the
Winterthur methods four operations. The third is cultural analysis, which includes the
objects functions and uses, both concrete and abstract, in regard to utility, meaning and to
what it communicates about its maker and past users through its material and symbolic
characteristics. For Fleming, this cultural analysis embraces the largest potential of
artefact study (Fleming 1982). Finally, the fourth operation, interpretation, is meant to
establish the relevance and significance of the artefact for our contemporary time and
culture. Throughout the process of analysis, from identification to interpretation, the
analytical operations and the artefacts properties interact, reflecting and modifying each
other.

2.2 First Contact

New to artefact-based study, armed with a brief overview of the Winterthur model and
face-to-face with our instrument, what did we encounter? Artefact #1987.2121: a formi-
dable and business-like pea-green metal upright tube that had two attached horizontal beam
arms that swung out from a small, box-like mid-section (see Fig. 1). Two narrower vertical
tubes stood on either side of the central tube and extended below the arm beams. The effect
was symmetrical, because the central tube extending above, the tubes below, and beams
themselves were roughly the same length. This part of the apparatusvisually the upper
third of the instrumentconnected to a heavy cylinder emerging from a circular base,
about the size of a salad plate, which was mounted on a strong metal tripod. The tripod legs
slotted individually into the base. The whole instrument stood about 175 cm high, a little
taller than some historians in the group, a little shorter than others. It was accompanied by

1
During the workshop, we used a version of the methods questions modified by Richard Kremer and
David Pantalony for teaching undergraduates at Dartmouth College.

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Fig. 1 The Artefact, The Eotvos Torsion Balance, assembled ready for view in a storage area of the Canada
science and technology museum, Ottawa, August 2009

two small, flat, empty wooden cases, about 8 cm 9 50 cm 9 3 cm, a small wooden box
4 cm 9 4 cm 9 13 cm reminiscent of a cutlery box that, like the flat cases, featured an
ornamented metal clasp that flipped open, and two sturdy wooden instrument cases, a
longer one circa 110 cm 9 40 cm 9 30 cm, and a shorter and deeper one circa
80 cm 9 40 cm 9 60 cm. The tripod legs were set on metal cups, about the diameter and
thickness of hockey pucks, but heavier, that were concave on the upper surface, with an
indentation to guide the position of the legs. The coat of paint on these cups was chipped
and scratched. Two levels were set into the base of the instrument, where it joined the
tripod, at 90 angles, allowing for fine vertical adjustments. The two horizontal arms could
be raised and lowered, presumably for storage purposes, since a study of the shallower
longer case indicated this position. Two holes in the body of the long, upright central tube
were covered with lenses affixed by rings and allowed a view into the tube to a mirror on
either side. At the end of each horizontal arm, opposite these holes, was a small telescope
that could be minimally adjusted in angle. Fixed above the telescopes at the eyepiece end
were two finely graduated linear scales. No measurement unit was given. At the top of the
central tube, protected by a metal lid that could be unscrewed and removed, were two
metal dials marked with rotation measurements. Near the top and at the bottom of each
lower tube were additional dials without measurement markings. There was a narrow

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mercury thermometer, about 10 cm long, fixed to the central tube just above the mid-
section where the arms attached. The artefact was incomplete. One removable dial was
missing (or had never existed), while its twin dial whose materials did not match the
original seemed to be a later replacement. An empty circular frame on the azimuth indi-
cated that there had previously been a lens, perhaps to magnify the scale and make fine
azimuth readings easier.
This stage of investigation of the instrument as a material object included manipulating
it, a prospect that was both intimidatingwould we damage it?and exciting (see Fig. 2).
Turning dials, removing the lid of the centre tube, looking through the telescopes, raising
and lowering the arms, rotating it, in short, moving and testing various parts, brought a
level of understanding that cannot come from viewing the instrument in a typical museum
setting. Numerous devices told us that this was a precision measuring instrument: two
levels and linear scales, a detached rectangular compass, thermometer, and an azimuth, to
which the levels were attached, and which, in addition, was engraved with an N indi-
cating the direction in which the instrument should be set up. These devices suggested
what was important to know in order to use this instrument and what external factors could
affect the measurement: i.e. that it was important to take temperature readings, to level the
instrument precisely, to know the compass direction and, through the azimuth, to know the

Fig. 2 Looking for clues, gloved discussion and manipulation of the instrument. Note the empty wire cases
underneath the tripod and a portion of the larger instrument case to the front left

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relationship of the measurements either to the north position or relative to other mea-
surements. Shining a flashlight into the holes in the body while peering through the
telescopes told us that that the telescope lens was marked with a crosshatch, that the mirror
inside reflected the linear scale over the telescope at the end of the horizontal arm on the
same side, that the two linear scale, telescope and reflection set-ups were independent of
one another, and that presumably the linear scale was crucial, since it revealed something
of the inner-workings of the instrument. Whatever happened inside had to be made
accessible in this manner.
However, at this point, it was still not clear to us what the instrument measured, what
the upper dials were for, and what the two sets of dials on the lower tubes were for. We
stepped back from the material object and moved towards other kinds of evidence, drawing
on the expertise of curators, our prior knowledge of scientific instruments and theories, and
to textual sources. Our analysis now depended on interweaving artefact and textual evi-
dence, a step facilitated by the fact that our artefact was surrounded by markings that were
equally textual and artifactual: labels and inscriptions on the outside of the cases,
instruction notices pasted within them, engravings on the instrument tubes, even words
written on commercial quality photographs decorating the inside lid of each of the two
large cases. These traces (hybrid text/artefact) would shape the stories we could build
around the artefact in important ways. The most critical trace, the one that opened up all
our stories from this point on, were four lines of text finely engraved onto its central face
plate of the instruments mid-section box, where the arm beams attached. They read:
orginal Eotvos
Made in Hungary
Suss Nandor R. T.
Budapest
36867
The first line, in which the instrument informs the researcher it was built to the orginal
[sic] design specifications of the renowned Hungarian scientist, Lorand Eotvos, gave our
artefact a name and function: it was an Eotvos torsion balance, an instrument used to
measure small gravitational variations. In even larger characters, the plate informed us that
our balance had been crafted by the company of the very same instrument makerNandor
Susswho had built Eotvos first torsion balance.
This identification was confirmed by the museum accession documents, which also gave
us some provenance information and a tentative date: the museum had acquired the artefact
from the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa in 1987, and assigned a date of 1928 to the
object. By then, Lorand Eotvos had been dead for 9 years, and Nandor Susswhose
workshop had originally built the first experimental model of the torsion balancefor 7.
The Nandor Suss Company retained both names on the instrument, using both Eotvos and
Suss scientific renown to market the torsion balance.

2.3 Material Contextualization

These few words on the instruments plate readily enabled us to search through databases
to find accounts of the instruments. A 1922 British description told us that the Eotvos
balance
consists of a fine torsion wire, carrying a lever which supports at its extremities two weights, at
different vertical heights, the whole being enclosed in a double-walled metal case which can be
rotated about a vertical axis. An azimuth circle enables the positions of the case to be determined and

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the orientation of the balance arm relative to it is observed by the aid of a telescope (Shaw and
Lancaster-Jones 1922, p. 151; see also Shaw and Lancaster-Jones 1923).
This straightforward description was not easy to reconcile with the artefact in front of us.
We had not paid attention to the wires yet, barely glancing at the two empty carrying wire
cases accompanying our balance. Moreover, our instrument seemed to be a double version
of the balance, with everything twice. Compared to pictures of typical Eotvos torsion
balances, apparently fragile brass instruments, our balances almost-military design was
strikingly different. Our attempt to identify our instrument was now slowly taking us into
the evaluative stage of our analysis.
Reflecting on the torsion wires, it became clear that what we could see and manipulate
was only the protective casing designed to protect the delicate balance from environmental
influences. The torsion wires, beams, and weights, which constituted the core of the
balance, were invisible from the outside. One way to find out whether the wires were inside
the instrument was to take it apart, a suggestion that the curators greeted without enthu-
siasm. A second way was to try to make a measurement with the balance. Yet, despite a
growing familiarity with the object in front of us and an increasing access to textual
descriptions, it seemed impossible to entirely recapture what this entailed. It was clear that
adjusting the instrument required a great deal of skill. Indeed, the torsion of the wire inside
the instrument could not be measured directly itself. Instead, the mirror attached to the wire
communicated the wires rotation by reflecting light onto a position of the scale. Our
manipulations enabled us to understand the relationship between telescope, mirror and
linear scale. Combined with knowledge from the 1922 description, they revealed a vital
element missing not only from the material set-up, but also from all the published reports
on the instrument we consulted, i.e. that in order to read the reflection of the linear scale
through the telescope, a strong, external light source focused on the mirror was needed.
The dialogue between clues found in the literature and our limited attempts to use the
instrument had thus led us to the rediscovery of what had been tacit knowledge for the
instruments users, a detail left out of all the descriptions of the instrument, despite its
essential role in the act of observation.
The discrepancy between the published descriptions of the instruments function or
appearance and the physical instrument in front of us is hard to overestimate. The
descriptions ranged from the geometrics of the London instrument maker Oertlings highly
abstract simplified description of the instruments workings to explain calculation
methods (see Fig. 3) to a 2-D representation of a similar instrument and its protective
casing that helped us imagine the inside of our own balance (see Fig. 4), to the 3-D object
which barely resembled either of these. Texts and diagrams discussing the balances
workings focused exclusively on the internal mechanism. We only had access to the
casing, wondering to what extent its design served a specific purpose and how much could
be viewed as aesthetic expression. We needed to investigate design elements both for
functionality and aesthetics.
First, we considered the visual symmetry of the object. Usual accounts of the balance
described it as consisting of a vertical tube with one horizontal arm, one telescope, one
lower tube and one set of upper and lower dials. Our object was a double version. One
central casing contained two internal instruments, each with a set-up for doing the read-
ings. Initially, we speculated that doing simultaneous readings could increase the accuracy
of the results. The literature on the instrument pointed to a different reason: one accurate
measurement required at least 5, preferably 6 probes at different points of rotation (Barton
1931). Since the torsion wires needed 12 h to settle to their final position after a rotation, a

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Fig. 3 The most abstract rendering of the instrument, published in a users guide, in the section explaining
how to perform the calculations associated with the observation in order to find the local gravitational force
(The Eotvos Torsion Balance 1925)

single measurement with the one-arm version of the torsion balance could take an entire
day. A double instrument like ours could do six probes in only three rotations, halving the
time of the measurement.2 Secondly, we turned to the robust and almost military
appearance of the instrument. This feature also put it in a different category than the
traditional Eotvos torsion balance. It could not be easily dented or damaged; the pea-green
painted exterior could be easily cleaned and indicated weather-proofing; the heavy carrying
cases with their felt and leather bands told of travel; scratches and chips on the tripod cups
testified to some actual rough usage. We seemed to have an instrument designed for
outdoor use. Yet most of the photographs we found of Eotvos torsion balances in textbooks
or the web appeared to be laboratory balances. They were delicate-looking, shiny, brass
instruments that would weather and tarnish too easily, with a low tripod that was far less
stable.
Examining these features, it proved impossible to completely separate functional from
aesthetic considerations as suggested by the Winterthur model. Some aspects of the
instruments design, such as its robust body and long tripod legs, were intimately tied to the
instruments field use. Others, such as a flower engraved on one of the dials, seemed to be
largely decorative, but still served a purpose. (It corresponded to a point on the instrument
base and seemed to be visual marker to help a user unpack, align and mount the instru-
ment). Even arm length was both functional and aesthetic. Arm length affected balance.

2
The description of the Eotvos torsion balance published by L. Oertling described a version of the
instrument with photographic registration, with the upper part of the instrument rotating automatically to a
new beam position every hour through an electromagnetic relay controlled by a time clock. This saved
routine attention but was not considered a complete substitute for the kind of direct visual reading our
balance offered through its telescope (The Eotvos Torsion Balance 1925).

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Fig. 4 A 2-D rendering of a

similar instrument, designed to
highlight its protective casing
(The Eotvos Torsion Balance
1925)

Longer arms made the instrument potentially instable; an instrument with shorter arms
would be less likely to topple over. The length of the arms is also determined by the
minimum distance necessary to focus the reflection from the mirror. But arm length also
defined the visual delicacy or robustness of the instrument. Similarly, the visual impression

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Fig. 5 Andrew Howard Miller poses with the instrument in the field (Miller 1934a)

of the usual, brass, single-armed torsion balances was also radically different from that of
the double-armed field version. In the single-balance instrument, the central, upper
vertical tube is placed directly over the base, while the lower vertical tube hangs down
from a short arm on the opposite side of the instrument from the longer horizontal reading
arm. The single-armed balances are asymmetrical and their visual directional pull is
downward. Although, the two-beamed instrument repeats this constellation twice, the
visual impression is symmetrical, strongly horizontal and, indeed, anthropomorphic. It
suggests a head and torso with outstretched arms and, in our version, tripod legs. When we
later found a photograph of our instrument in the field posed beside the geophysicist in
charge, the echoes of a domestic portrait were striking: the instrument and the man,
approximately the same height, stand companionably in front of the instrument tent (see
Fig. 5) (Miller 1934a).
Finally, the style of the horizontal arms themselves demanded attention. They were not
of solid metal, but had a pattern of diamond and triangle-shaped holes. Functionally, this
would make the instrument lighter. The positions, size and shapes of these spaces are,
however, not determined, as long as the arms are stable. Different versions of the instru-
ment achieved this in different ways. In our instrument the arms had a diamond-like pattern
of crossing metal strips, a form reminiscent of heavy engineering structures like the Eiffel
tower. In fact, the arms most resemble the type of steel girder bridges that were built at the
end of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, and they bear a close resem-
blance to the Josef Bridge (Liberty Bridge) in Budapest, the city in which this instrument
was made. Was the instrument maker influenced by the large steel girder constructions he
saw around him? The visual echoes between such engineering structures and the scientific
instrument were underlined for us by three different photographs of Budapest pasted inside
the upper lid of the instrument cases. These were commercial photographs of tourist views,
stamped with studio logos. One showed the impressive Hungarian parliament building
(labelled Parliament in no less than five different languages) and one was a scene in the
Freiheitsplatz, or Liberty square. The third was a view of the Danube, spanned by two
bridges, with the Josef Bridge squarely in the foreground (see Fig. 6).

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Fig. 6 The interior top of the larger instrument case, with its photograph of the Josef Bridge in Budapest
and a label warning caution! when packing the tripod legs

2.4 The Artefact: A Narratives Crossroad

As unusual clues to the material context for this instrument, these photographs prompted us
to review more comprehensively the varied traces of text that were part of the artefact. This
in turn re-focussed our attention on what might seem an unimportant part of a scientific
instrumentthe carrying crates. Paper warning labels printed in large red and black letters
cautioned users in English that the balance must be disassembled and stored in specific
ways to avoid damage. These texts suggested that despite the balances rugged appearance,
it was in fact rather delicate. Disassembling, moving and reassembling it would have been
a slow process; when full, the larger of the two cases was heavy and bulky enough that it
certainly would have required two people to lift it, although the smaller case could have
been carried by one person. The exterior of the crates had a number of interesting, if more
oblique and confusing texts obviously added to it after its manufacture. The inscription 45/
05, written in black marker on one of the crates, can serve as an example of the difficulty
in assigning definitive meaning to information supplied by the object. It could have
referred to a date (and a particularly suggestive one, May 1945, which briefly conjured up
speculations of Allies looting Nazi scientific institutions), a catalogue or shipping number
or a shipping weight.3 We also found an attached tag from the Department of National
Defence, which indicated that the crate had been shipped at some point to Dr. J. R. Weber/
Dominion Observatory/Ottawa, Ont. from PCSP, Alert, NWT (see Fig. 7). On the

3
The version of the Hungarian crest engraved on the balance was a version revived after the dissolution of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It invoked a pre-imperial sense of the Hungarian nation.

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Fig. 7 Obsolescence? The tag attached to the handle of the larger of the two instrument cases and marked
alert, north west territories; Dr. Weber accompanied by the black pencilled words satellite antenna on
the exterior of the case, this tag suggested the possibility the instrument cases may have been recycled for
another expedition, even though the interior of the box was so specifically designed for the torsion balance

battered grey exterior surface of the larger case, someone had written satellite antenna.
The writing on and surrounding the artefact provided tantalizing information about the
artefact, maker and users but could only be securely interpreted, if this was possible at all,
in combination with other sources of evidence.
Notably, the labels on this Hungarian instrument were so revealing to us in part because
they were in English, a point whose significance seemed reinforced by the misspelling of
orginal. The instrument was intended for either the Anglo-American market or perhaps a
specific English-speaking user, an indication of the international context for geophysical
practices in this era (Kerwin 1981; Bowie 1920). Yet we could identify as well the strong
nationalist associations of the torsion balance, conveyed equally by an engraved Hungarian
crest above the lettering on the faceplate and by the previously described photographs of
significant sites in Budapest in the instrument cases (Gero 2006). After WWI Hungarians
sought to strengthen their distinct national identity and legitimize the newly created state of
Hungary (Stinner 1998). The choice of photographic subjects, engineering achievements
and centres of government power, combined with the insertion of the photographs them-
selves into a scientific instrument case, suggest that someonethe instrument maker, the
purchaser, the user?wished to call attention to Hungarys national identity and as well as
to its modern scientific achievements. In this example, the torsion balance and the crates
demonstrate connections between internationalism and nationalism and make eloquent
statements about the inter-war period: through the international circulation of objects, ideas
and reputations, science could be used to spread specific nationalist claims and to buttress a
national sense of pride.
Some of these traces were as fragmentary as they were intriguing. Who used the
instrument at the Dominion Observatory, and when did it become obsolete, if its cases
could be recycled for another purpose? Who was Dr. Weber? Were these custom-built
crates used at some point to house an entirely different instrument then the one they were
intended for? Was a satellite antenna really so similar in size and shape to the balance for
which the crates were carefully customized? This is the point of our investigations at which

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we sought more specific stories. We needed to look more closely at geodesy in order to
produce a thicker analysis of the torsion balance in general and the biography of this
Hungarian-Canadian balance in particular.

3 Whats a Nice Hungarian Like You Doing in a Place Like Canada?

While the object itself stimulated questions and offered potential clues as to its specific
history, both as a Hungarian torsion balance and as a Canadian acquisition, in piecing this
history together, the encounter with the material object alone was unable to resolve them.
To build a detailed cultural analysis of this artefact we needed to turn again to documentary
and archival sources of information, while keeping the object and text interdependent. We
had learned that Eotvos developed the torsion balance to measure gravity, but what did the
instrument measure exactly? A force? A displacement? An angle? How could this
instrument illuminate the aims and achievements of geodesy? We were convinced that the
balance was a field instrument, but this was in some ways a puzzle: the name Eotvos is
most familiarly associated with a famous experiment in support of general relativity, but
one that could be done in a laboratory with shiny single-armed brass instruments. How did
such laboratory-based practices translate into field gravitation measurements? The
instrument had offered glimpses into its iconic role in Hungary but didnt speak to its
historical significance for Canadian science, especially the scientific exploration of the
countrys most northern regions. What was a nice Hungarian instrument like this doing in
storage in a Canadian museum?
It became clear that identifying and evaluating the artefact could answer some ques-
tions, but that in regard to others it was only the beginning of the research process. The
third and fourth operations of the Winterthur model, discovering the past and present
significance of the artefact, would be found in what art historian George Kubler calls the
real intersections existing between human behaviour and material objects (Fleming
1982). We eventually explored three of the intersections embedded in the torsion balance:
(1) the name Eotvos associated with laboratory demonstration engraved on what looked
like a robust field instrument, (2) the place of the Hungarian instrument in a Canadian
observatory and in the work of Canadian geoscientists, and 3) the label connecting the
Observatory and the torsion balance cases to Alert.

3.1 The Eotvos Torsion Balance: A Laboratory or Field Instrument?

Finding Eotvos name on this sturdy, military-looking instrument was unexpected. Current
historiography embeds Eotvos in the traditional European history of science as the creator
of the torsion balance that proved the equivalence principle or relativity theory. According
to this narrative, after attending university in Budapest, Eotvos travelled extensively,
studying under the greatest physicists of his time: Kirchhoff, Helmholtz and Neumann.
Returning to Budapest, he was appointed as chair of theoretical physics, but soon trans-
ferred to the chair of experimental physics. A devoted science communicator, Eotvos
designed a torsion balance in 1888 to visually illustrate that, as Newton thought (and
Einstein would later assume), inertial mass (which measures a bodys resistance to motion)
is truly equivalent to gravitational mass (which quantifies the attraction of a given body to
a gravitational force) (Cunningham 1919; Boys 1918; Boniolo 1992). The usual Eotvos
story stops here, with no mention of field research, only precise laboratory demonstrations

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of forces. There was no place in this history for the machine gun-like instrument we had in
our hands. A new context had to be discovered.
The scientific literature of the first part of the twentieth century slowly offered a dif-
ferent picture. Eotvos had realized, before devising the balance, that even if no couple was
applied to such an instrument, a torque would appear in its cable due to the difference of
the direction of gravity on its two masses. The genius of Eotvos was to work out that, from
the deviations of the beam with respect to the instruments case taken at several azimuths,
the gravitation gradient, i.e. the rate of change of the gravitational constant at a given
location could be deduced with great precision (Bullard 1955). Variation of the gravita-
tional constant over the globe could reveal variations in the earths topology, both the
visible ones, such as nearby mountain ranges, and hidden ones, like salt domes that
potentially concealed petroleum (Hinks 1911). From the perspective of the scientific lit-
erature of the 1920s, then, Eotvos is renowned not for having devised an experiment
supporting Einsteins new General Relativity, but for having understoodwith the help of
Hugo de Boek the head of the Hungarian geologic surveythat the torsion balance could
be the next divining rod of geologists. Eotvos understood these possibilities and
embraced them: he devised a portable version of his instrument and started investigating,
spending long hours on the frozen Lake Balaton to prove that the balance could suc-
cessfully determine important geologic features (Marx 2003; Bell 1998). As the English
physicist A. O. Rankine pointed out, this made him nothing less than the father of
geophysical prospecting for oil, even if a hesitant one (quoted in Baron Roland von
Eotvos 1948).
But was his balance really a useful prospecting tool? Reports on the torsion balance
reveal a temperamental instrument. As mentioned above, even in ideal circumstances, for
each location 6 h-long measurements needed to be taken. The measurements themselves
required interpretation, since an involved series of calculations was needed to obtain any
information about the relative value of the gravitational constant g with the instrument.
Corrections had to be made to these calculations to take into account the rotation of the
earth, the presence of mountains, etc. Temperature changes, solar radiation and electrical
influence distorted the action of the fine wires. Remnant torsion was also a problem. If the
wires swung when the instrument was moved, they took a long time to return to zero
position. The (fairly inaccessible) wires had to be clamped within the casing to keep them
still when the instrument was moved, not a major concern with the laboratory balance but
certainly a concern for the mobile field one. Prospection had to be done at the end of the
day (or even at night), with the balance protected by a small portable hut, so that tem-
perature changes would not affect the wires. Scientists at the Geological Survey of Great
Britain experimented at the end of the 1920s with a double tent, trying to enable daytime
observations, but without success. An observer set up the measurement, then left the tent,
closing it up, to return after the wire had stabilized, and, in the dark, took the reading by
illuminating the scale and observing through the scope. If the wire was still vibrating, the
observer could either make a visual estimate of the mean position or go away and come
back later. An example of observational training with the instrument in 1928 involved
erecting the tent in the crypt of the Museum of Practical Geology in central London so that
the trainee could observe during the day-time, and, in the intervals between readings,
return to the library a few floors above to read torsion balance literature and practice the
calculations. In this case, rather than outdoor conditions being subjected to controls to
simulate the laboratory, the field instrument training consisted of an imitation of labo-
ratory conditions (Miller 1929).

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Whatever the difficulties of the instrument, both the physical evidence and these
accounts told us the Eotvos balance was at once laboratory and field instrument, with an
authority that straddled both sites, sometimes uncomfortably (E. R. F. 1926). Indeed, a
third site of authority is implicated as well: on the basis of Hungarian sources, Radnai has
recently suggested that Eotvos initially developed his gravitational instruments in
18861888 for teaching demonstrations. In this interpretation, the instrument was an icon
of laboratory skill, its precision designed to impress an audience in Budapests new
physical sciences lecture hall (Radnai 2001).4

3.2 A Torsion Balance for Canada: A. H. Miller and the Dominion Observatory

The same strands seen in the general history of the instrument emerged in the biography of
our particular instrument, the Suss Eotvos torsion balance # 36867. As we were investi-
gating the reason why a field version of the instrument had been developed, we searched
for any information that would link the balance to the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa. A
name surfaced immediately: Andrew Howard Miller (18861962). Millers career would
turn out to mirror the international and ambivalent status of the torsion balancean object
to impress audiences with the prestige and precision of modern science, an object to test
geodesic theories and an object that served as an itinerant prospecting tool.
Connecting the instrument to Miller revealed a second point critical to our under-
standing of artefact study. We were building a biography of a particular instrument, but
that instrument was never a singular object. Miller encountered the instrument as one
among many, comparing it with other styles of torsion balance, seeing it as successor to his
pendulum apparatus, remembering it as a precursor to the truly portable truck-based
gravimeter of his later career. Miller also came to the instrument as a kind of connoisseur: a
male, a military engineer and a working scientist whose reactions were embedded in an
array of experiences with other devices and other kinds of technical proficiency. We had
earlier encountered the way that the torsion balance evoked other instruments when trying
to understand its genealogy (its evolution from other torsion instruments, for instance) and
the difference between field and laboratory version. Here, the instruments real inter-
sections with its user in Canada made this double vision of the artefact as both particular
and representative more obvious.
Miller was born in 1886 and raised on a farm near Winnipeg. He graduated from a local
college in 1906 and then attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. After further engi-
neering studies at McGill University in Montreal, he studied and taught at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison. At the outbreak of war in 1914, he enlisted with the Canadian Field
Artillery, serving as a lieutenant in a siege battery unit. In 1920, after a further year in
Oxford at the end of the war, Miller settled in Ottawa where he became the Gravity
expert of the Dominion Observatory (founded 1898) (Innes 1962). At the time that Miller
joined it, the institution was at a turning point: its most prominent astronomical observing
program had decamped to a new telescope built in Victoria, BC and the director, Dr. Otto
Klotz, was keen to build up the scientific reputation of its magnetic, seismological and
gravity work (Hodgson 1989; Klotz 1919).
The work Miller published before the Observatory acquired the balance was engaged
with an isostasy debate over the difference that existed between the measured values of the
gravitational constant g and the ones predicted for the same locations. One theory,

4
This style of laboratory instrument demonstration presents an interesting contrast with the development of
deskilled instruments in the late nineteenth-century science laboratory (see Gooday 2004).

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favoured by Continental physicists, modelled the earth as a planet with a rigid crust that
supported the continents as overloads. A second theory, defended by the Americans John
Fillmore Hayford and John William Bowie, claimed that the different parts of the conti-
nents floated more or less deeply in the upper crust, depending on their relative density
(Watts 2001). In a 1926 paper based on data from British Columbia collected using a
pendulum method, Miller sided with the latter (Miller 1926). Could Miller have decided to
acquire a torsion balance primarily in the hope of advancing the geophysical debate?
Further reading showed us that this was unlikely. Miller might have publicly supported
Hayfords position in the debate, but proving the latter right was not his priority. Indeed, on
the instructions of the director of the Observatory, Otto Klotz, Miller published his early
results as free air observations, i.e. as raw data, not corrected for either of the two isostasy
theories (Hodgson 1989, pp. 104105). In effect, Miller was not primarily taking sides in a
scientific debate; he was more pragmatically surveying the geology of Canada.
Klotz had obtained the necessary funds for the torsion balance that Miller used in the
early 1920s by arguing that it might help to determine the location of oil fields in Canada.
If in private Klotz expressed some doubts that the instrument could fulfil this work, he saw
the need to find a pragmatic justification for the request for funding: To further our
scientific work we must always be able to show some practical bearing that is connected
therewith and in this I believe I am a pretty good adept (Hodgson 1989, p. 105). Soon
Miller published a long description of the torsion balance method in the weekly Canadian
Mining Journal, drawing attention to the claims about the role of the instrument in
identifying five salt domes (a promising site for oil deposits) in Texas in 19241926
(Miller 1928). From the outset, then, the torsion balance at the Dominion Observatory had
many uses. If scientists acquired them primarily for scientific research, it was their
potential practical applications that justified their purchase to government bureaucrats,
indelibly linking the instruments with mining speculation.
Our instrument was not the first torsion balance used in Canada, which was that
obtained by Klotz from Otto Henker in 1923, a scientist at Carl Zeiss laboratory in Jena,
Germany. It proved unreliable. Even after being sent back to the instrument maker for
further adjustment, it never worked properly (Hodgson 1989, p. 105). Miller thus continued
his work on relative gravity with Mendenhall pendulums throughout the 1920s taking them
to the Maritimes, Quebec, Western Canada, Ontario, Washington DC and finally, in 1928,
to Europe, where he completed an observation at the heart of the geophysical web of data,
the Geodetic Institute at Potsdam, the absolute point against which world gravitational
variation was measured. This six-month European tour also led Miller to the Suss torsion
balance. At Potsdam, Miller was given the use of an Askania torsion balance for 10 days,
and completely pulled apart the instrumentunlike the boys watch, we were able to
reassemble it, he noted, and I feel as a result of this I know the instrument pretty
thoroughly (Miller 1929, p. 6). In Budapest, he visited the Eotvos Institute and accom-
panied its director, Dr. Pekar, on a field trip to take measurements on the plains east of the
city. His report on this shopping tour makes clear that the Eotvos torsion balance, like the
gravity measurements themselves, existed within a complicated web of objectsgravita-
tional instruments and others (Miller 1929; cf. Bennet 2001; Pantalony 2009).
On Millers return, the Dominion observatory, in collaboration with the Geological
Survey of Canada, acquired four Askania magnetometers and two new torsion balances, an
Askania torsion balance and our Suss torsion balance, the latter being sole property of the
Observatory. The Suss torsion balance was the instrument Miller had liked best as his
report makes clear: I was struck with the portability, simplicity and finish of it (Miller
1929, p. 9). With other colleagues from the Geological Survey of Canada and the

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Dominion Observatory, he conducted observations between 1929 and 1935 that tested the
ability of their various new apparatus to discover geological and magnetic anomalies that
could reveal potential ore deposits. Miller first surveyed three faults in the Ottawa area to
test how the instruments performed in different kinds of terrain. Unsurprisingly, it worked
best in flat or gently undulating conditions. He then did some comparative work in an area
of pyrite deposit in much rougher terrain, near Calabogie, Ontario (Miller 1932). Over the
next few years, he used the torsion balance on survey work in the Onakawana region in
northern Ontario and to locate salt deposits on the northern shore of Nova Scotia (Miller
1934b; Miller and Norman 1936).
In a 1932 paper Miller claimed that the torsion balance had given quite satisfactory
service, but that [s]uccess with the torsion balance has for the most part been obtained
indirectly by locating the geological structure that is favourable to the occurrence of the
mineral deposit(Miller 1932, p. 1). One finds geological structures that suggest the possi-
bility of certain mineral resources. Not a divining rod, then, but an instrument of scientific
reasoning whose success depended on comprehensive geological knowledge and an ability
to interpret the record. Despite the military exterior that the Suss company gave to the torsion
balance, it never lost the characteristics and problems of a precision laboratory instrument.

3.3 Afterlife: Operation Musk Ox

Throughout this exploration of Millers work, we expected to find connections to our third
intersection. As noted earlier, the tag attached to the largest of the instrument cases
suggested that the torsion balance might have travelled with a Dr. J. R. Weber to Alert,
Northwest Territories. The marking 45/05 on the case suggested the date May 1945.
Nothing emerged until the end of our week in Ottawa, when we discovered that in 1945
two of the Dominion Observatorys magnetic experts had been part of operation Musk
Ox, the first military attempt to develop operational procedures for deployment in the
Arctic (Millman 1946). We also discovered a very recent obituary for a Jean-Robert Hans
Weber, a Swiss-born scientist who had conducted extensive research on the gravity and
seismology of the Arctic (Chianello 2009). Was it possible that Weber had used the
balance in the Musk Ox operation? The dates did not match. More importantly, nothing in
the rare reports we found of the scientific work of the Musk Ox operation or Webers work
suggested that the torsion balance itself travelled so far north. In fact, given what we now
knew about the sensitivity of the balance, it seemed highly unlikely that the instrument
ever travelled to such a harsh environment. As the container markings suggest, the sturdy
instrument cases may have been used after 1945 to transport a satellite antenna to the
Observatory scientists who, like Weber, surveyed the Arctic, while the balance itself
collected dust in the Observatorys basement. The tag did not tell of a new life for the
torsion balance, but possibly of how, within a decade, it went from being a high-tech
geophysical prospecting tool, to an instrument of so little value that its own case was re-
purposed. The Alert tag called attention then to an impermanent quality of this artefact
which belied its durable appearance. Within 20 years of its arrival in Canada, the instru-
ment was largely obsolete. As we later discovered, just before the Second World War a
much more portable and rapid gravimeter (now usually known as the LaCoste-Romberg
design) came into widespread use; it could be incorporated into a vehicle for movement
over the terrain, and replaced field torsion balances like the Askania and the Suss (Miller
1946). This third story, of the instrument cases afterlife, ended by reminding us of the
instability of the artefacts meaning in a history that shifted from Budapest to museum
storage on another continent. This setting, like our investigations, emphasized the

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dynamism of the artefact (Schaffer 2000). This instrument continues to shift its meanings
in its current phase of existence as an object in a national science museum, temporarily
released from storage to stand in a dusty hangar surrounded by antique cars, steam engines,
bicycles, and, occasionally, scholars.

4 Conclusions

The single instrument here has no unified history. It was a type of gravimeter (among a
taxonomic range of other types). It was Hungarian, but also Canadian and imperial, since it
was purchased for the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa and used by a former Rhodes
Scholar to make measurements tying geological structures in Canadian territory to a global
network of such measurements. It was an emblem of high national and international
science, to re-build the importance of the Ottawa Observatorys scientific program fol-
lowing World War I, just after its most prestigious astronomical program had joined a new
instrument based in Victoria. But it was also a prospecting tool, linked to a burgeoning
world of mining companies that were themselves increasingly international in their reach.
Finally, and intriguingly, it was an artefact that called attention to its own qualities of
impermanence as well as permanencea national icon of Hungary, a country whose
borders and identity were transformed more than once during the instruments lifetime; an
instrument so useful and yet so cumbersome that it was quickly replaced; an instrument
whose wooden cases apparently went on an Arctic expedition without it. Its many inter-
sections lead beyond anecdotes about particular historical icons or events to a deeper
understanding of scientific practice, styles of knowledge and contingencythat is, to
science as a complex human endeavour.
As its layers of history tell us, the Eotvos instrument has travelled widely; what about
material culture methods? What are the prospects for making the study of artifacts more
available to a wider range of scholars, teachers and students? Our first point, certainly, is
that these methods are worth exploring. As a colleague in 1928 told Miller, then in the
middle of his European tour to examine gravimeters and observation practices, Dont
believe what anybody tells you about his [Eotvos] methodsnot even meuntil you have
found out for yourself.5 Over a generation of research in the history of science has
emphasized the critical importance of the different kinds of experience that enter into the
construction of scientific truths about the natural world. More than a textbook or experi-
ment report, interaction with artifacts reveals what Otto Sibum has called gestural
knowledge, a working knowledge that is historically embodied and intimately linked
to human action performed by a social group or an individual (Sibum 1995, p. 76) The
simple physical presence of the Eotvos balance brought home these considerations, even
without full-scale historical reconstruction of field observation. Looking through the
telescope showed the need for a light source, for example, while our manipulations of the
instrument communicated a sense of what setting it up and adjusting it entailed. Material
culture methods can help students understand the extent to which physics, chemistry, or
biology are more than sets of theories: they are physical practices that rely on careful

5
This was Dr. William Francis Porter McLintock, curator of the Geological Museum in London, Millers
first stop on his tour (Miller 1929, p. 1). McLintock (18871960) had used the Eotvos balance in the 1926 in
the near East and helped introduce the instrument to the British survey. He later directed the Geological
Survey.

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observational practices and manipulations which have to be slowly acquired through

practice.
Beyond this general point, the method we used as our starting point in this studythe
Winterthur modelled to an appreciation of its distinct possibilities and its limitations.
The Winterthur and similar models have often been used to introduce students in variety of
disciplines to material culture object analysis (Elliot et al. 1994; Pearce 1994; Turner 1993;
Hood 2003; Hamilton & McKellar 2006). The primary advantage of the Winterthur model
and, to a lesser extent, the analytical model suggested by Jules Prown in his essay Mind
over Matter is that they provide a step-by-step guideline to necessary aspects of object
analysis and a stimulus for questions (Prown 1982). As pedagogical tools, these steps focus
attention on aspects of the object that might otherwise escape recognition, depending on a
students (or researchers) prior experience. They are useful for orientation and structure.
Yet our experiences during the workshop and subsequent attempts to apply this kind of
approach in our own history of science classrooms suggests that beyond the decorative arts
context from which the methods emerged, these models require some modification in order
to adequately capture significant aspects of scientific instruments and technological arti-
facts. There is a bias built into the models, one that Jules Prown especially makes explicit
when he describes a hierarchy of object types in terms of information content. In Prowns
assessment, objects of high culture (art) contain the most cultural information, whereas the
information content of apparatustechnological artifacts, tools, and, one may assume,
scientific instruments, that is, devises that he deems to be primarily utilitarian, have low
information content in terms of material culture studies (Elliot et al. 1994). As Prown
claims, Devices-implements, tools, utensils, appliances, machines, vehicles, instruments
constitute the most problematic and, to date, a relatively unproductive range of artifacts for
the study of material culture (Prown 1982, p. 14). Indeed, for Prown, the only way to
integrate such objects productively into material culture studies is to focus on what he
terms their style, their aesthetic aspects rather than their utilitarian function (Prown
1982; cf. Kemp 1991).
In analyzing scientific work, this hierarchical distinction between style and function
works poorly. Such claims run counter to both the epistemological and pedagogical claims
of artifact and instrument study in the history of science and in particular to studies in the
history of experiment. Style has long been used to establish contexts for scientific
instruments, but, as J. V. Field points out, although ornate decoration and aesthetically
crafted design did not rule out an instruments functionality, they often indicated a dif-
ferent primary function than usethe demonstration of status perhaps, or the search for
patronage (Field 1988). The decorativeness of these instruments was itself a function, but
not one directly related to the practice of science.
Although in the Winterthur model Fleming describes function broadly as including
both the uses (intended functions) and the roles (unintended functions) of the object in its
culture, including utility, delight, and communication this definition falls short of
encompassing the specific characteristics of scientific and technological artifacts (Fleming
1982, p. 166). This is the most severe deficit of the model when applied to the material
culture of scientific instruments, and the area in which it is most in need of modification.
What is missing in the Winterthur model, for all that it is about material culture, is a
confrontation with the objects materiality as resistance or challenge. It is not straight-
forward to use the object, to interact with it, and acquire a variety of sensory and perceptive
information about it. Setting up and attempting to use an instrument reveals much about the
(tacit and explicit) knowledge and skills necessary to make it work, and this in turn reflects
upon historical scientific practices. This knowledge and skill can range from very

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elementary skills, such as focussing a telescope, to the advanced ability to analysis the
accuracy of historical experiments performed with the instrument, as is found in replication
studies (Sibum 1995; Heering 2006, 2008). It would be useful to add a further series of
questions to the model that would address various aspects of putting the object to use, such
as, for example: what skills are needed; what senses are involved; what does ease or
difficulty of use imply about the intended user; does attempted use point to the need for
auxiliary objects, to possible defects/changes in the object since is manufacture or period
of active use, to the need for additional sources of knowledge, whether textual or tacit and,
importantly, how does current experience of the object compare to the experiences of
historical actors.
For scientific instruments, too, the relationship of artifact and text deserves more
emphasis. Paying attention to the challenges of using the instrument paradoxically tied the
object and the printed sources closer together. Our different engagement as human subjects
with objects and language is a lively matter for philosophical, disciplinary and institutional
debates (Auslander et al. 2009). Without undervaluing the distinction between text and
artefact, however, we found that our attention moved between them constantly. In practice
we interwove evidence that depended on material or bodily encounters and evidence from
textual records rapidly and effectively. Indeed, from our perspective, our instrument was
simultaneously text and object, featuring inscriptions, labels, numerical scales, photo-
graphs as well as arms, cylinders, knobs, wires, and scopes. Textual descriptions of the
Eotvos torsion balance returned us to the instrument in front of us with new questions, and
vice versa. The finding here for us was simple: the physical presence of the instrument
expanded our resources and added to, rather than distracted us from, our more familiar
arena of textual expertise. Perhaps the parallel here lies with the study of visual repre-
sentation in sciencea form of evidence about scientific practice and knowledge-making
that has stimulated historians and philosophers to develop new vocabularies, sensibilities
and genealogies (Friedman and di Sessa 1999; Kemp 1997).
In the course of our own confrontation with the Eotvos balance in the museum work-
shop and later in the classroom, we identified a number of further areas where the Win-
terthur model is in need of additions or modifications for use in teaching. In a way, it
proposed not so much a method as a framework for study, and while this makes the model
a powerful tool for experts, it may pose specific challenges for students new to the field.
The very act of looking at an instrument, for example, of noticing detailsbe it the shape
of a knob, the form of an electric cord, or the colour of a dialand determining their
relevance, can be difficult for the untrained eye. Students notice little once they have
identified and labelled an instrument, once they have determined that an object is a
barometer, a camera, or a Bunsen burner.
One method of counteracting this labelling blindness is to present students with an
unfamiliar instrument, a kymograph, for example. While this encourages students to spend
more time observing and manipulating the artifact, however, it may not be the most
effective way to teach students how to look more objectively at objects. Our classroom
experience suggests that drawing may be more effective. Not only does it encourage
students to notice small, but perhaps significant details about artifacts, it also helps them to
imagine how the different parts of instruments interact with one another. When asked to
draw an apparatus before analyzing it, some students will quite naturally make both a
general drawing of the whole object and additional illustrations of its elements, as if they
were performing a visual autopsy on their artifact to reveal the different functions of its
various parts.

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A second area in which the Winterthur method requires modification for classroom use
is in the identification of materials. While drawing directs students attention to the shape,
colour, style, even function of an instrument, it is not useful in determining its material
composition or mode of production. Materials and manufacturing processes, however, can
yield a wealth of information about an objects various functions, the geographical and
economical constraints that affected its manufacture, or the position of its owner within the
scientific community (Friedel 1993). However, identifying plastics, evaluating the quality
of glass, and recognizing different types of wood, require a considerable degree of
knowledge. The same applies to determining whether an instrument is hand-made or
industrially produced and whether it has undergone modification by its users. Unfortu-
nately, untrained students and researchers rarely have enough expertise to clearly deter-
mine materials or methods of production in a curatorial sense.
Decorative arts students can often rely on a rich scholarship in their field that links the
style of an object to its possible material constituents or mode of production. Unfortu-
nately, such information is rarely available to the students of scientific instruments. One
solution to this problem that proved useful in both our research and teaching is to compare
the instrument under investigation to other objects, for example taxonomically similar
instruments (the Askania torsion balance), instruments with similar functions (earlier
pendulum balances), instruments used in the same institution (the telescopes of the
Dominion observatory), artifacts with the same geographical origins (the bridges of
Budapest), instruments connected as part of a historical experience (the various objects
encountered throughout Millers 1928 tour) etc. Although, the museum setting best lends
itself to this type of comparative analysis, a similar effect can be achieved by using pictures
found on the internet, especially those in the growing digital collections of science
museums. Our classroom experience suggests that this lack of information can easily be
turned into an exercise in design for second or third-year engineering students by asking
them to describe how they would build a specific object or to imagine what they would do
if some materials were unavailable, etc. Such exercises are especially useful when done in
small groups where students can both rely on one anothers knowledge and debate com-
peting hypotheses.
Despite minor difficulties in adapting it to the classroom, the Winterthur method has
proved an excellent pedagogical tool. The torsion balances size, colour, weight, markings
and anthropomorphic stance, in combination with the delicacy of the torsion wire mea-
surement, communicated information about inter-war field science and geodesy that no
textual description, photograph or biography of Eotvos, as necessary as they are, could
have conveyed quite as effectively. Our study of this field balance related to, but very
different from, the iconic Eotvos balance allowed us to know Eotvos not only as the great
experimentalist or pedagogue, but as a prospector (Stinner 1994, 1998; Kovacs 2003).
Millers history with the instrument showed much about the work of a physicist in the
1930s; advancing geodesic theory and measurement meant travelling throughout Europe to
acquire different instruments, testing them in the field and also making measurements
designed to promote political or economic agendas. A focus on artifacts enabled us to see
how the work of scientists is embedded in a multitude of contexts.
Our museum study and subsequent classroom experience convinced us, on the one hand,
that the Winterthur method could introduce some students to the sciences, while, on the
other, it could be a powerful pedagogical tool for educators hoping to help science students
learn about their discipline, from both a socio-historical and a technical perspective. Students
often have a problematic image of science that originates in part in their difficulty in bridging
the gap between their textbook narratives and their limited laboratory experience (van Eijck

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et al. 2009). This may be because, to use Sibums words, text and artifacts engage different
sense economies and modes of working that require and prompt different cognitive effects
(Auslander et al. 2009, p. 1358). Our museum experience suggests that the Winterthur
method could be an effective tool to bridge this gap between the historical narratives of
science and the complex reality of the laboratory practice by helping students uncover within
a single object the rich and often contradictory nature of science.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the Canada Science and Technology Museum, its
curators, conservators, and staff and the organizers of the 2009 Reading Artifacts: Summer Institute in the
Material Culture of Science, especially David Pantalony, Richard Kremer, Roland Wittje and Randall
Brooks. We are moreover indebted to the anonymous referees who provided us with insightful and useful
comments. Thanks also to J. Cameron Roberts for his research assistance on the project. Melanie Frappier
would also like to acknowledge financial support from the SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster Situating
Science for her participation to the workshop and the development of similar initiatives in Nova Scotia.

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