The vast majority of the last three years’ work on Making Modernity exists only on paper or in digital files. We have seen the actual gallery space only as a shell for nearly two years now, and the development of content has existed almost solely as 11 x 17 printouts of elevations and Word documents containing script: the lack of anything real and tangible can make it challenging to keep up one’s enthusiasm for the project.

Last week, however, we got to whet our appetites for things to come. Now when we enter our lobby in the morning, we can peer into the gallery through Plexiglas windows and see the construction crew busily installing the floors and staircase. And last Friday many members of the curatorial team traveled to New Jersey to visit with the designers and fabricators and see a mock-up of one of the glow panels that will be placed on the perimeter walls. We analyzed the color (which still isn’t quite right - I’ve begun to feel a little picky about these things), the armature and mounts for the objects, the reader rails, and even the number identification system for the objects (oh, the details!). We made real decisions based on actual things. It was energizing and gratifying to see our hard work starting to materialize.

The practice of chemistry has always been a dirty endeavor. Looking through the old alchemical paintings just outside my office, nearly all of them have one thing in common: smoke. Smokestacks feature prominently in paintings and book covers celebrating the chemical enterprise from the last two centuries. Not that the smoke was always seen as a good thing. Concerns about air pollution and health entered the public debate in Britain not coincidentally about the same time that the alkali factories got up and running. But the smoke and the smokestacks still presented an image of progress. It wasn’t so much about the smoke, as how much smoke.

Purity and impurity: what makes the difference? Well, it depends. It depends upon what you’re trying to do. If you’re fabricating semiconductors, then your water better be as close to pure as you can possible get it. But there’s the rub: how do we know when pure is pure, or impure, or pure enough?

We’ve come a long way from the days when Michael Faraday could offer his card to Father Thames, or when rivers in the United States might catch fire (like the Cuyahoga in Ohio did several times in the 20th century). The divide between pure and impure is no longer something simply visible, or obvious.

The ability to monitor chemicals grew up alongside the more industrial side of chemistry as a way of keeping tabs of what went where. While in earlier days a public health official might have used a Ringlemann smoke chart as a way of qualifying the dirtiness of the smoke being emitted, today we rely on more sophisticated equipment to help give quality (and quantity) to those elements of the air, water, and soil that we can’t see.

But our ability to see more, to find a trace of a chemical in ever smaller amounts, has had the reciprocal effect of challenging our notions of presence, dose and the purity/impurity divide. When James Lovelock first introduced his electron capture detector as a new tool for environmental monitoring, scientists gained a new perspective on the world. Traces of pesticides could be found in streams and lakes hundreds of miles from where they were applied. CFCs could be found in the air at sea and in the upper reaches of the ozone layer. Were these molecules not there previously? Of course they were. But now, with the ability to see them, our very ideas about the chemical constitution of the world, and our effect on it, were changing. How much is too much? It depends – how much can you see?

In Making Modernity we’ve tried to show the people, the places, and the tools that made this transformation possible in a way that helps to make visible this ongoing story. It’s been a fascinating task for me. Objects do not speak on their own. An electron capture detector cannot convey the stories that link it to some of the most famous scientific battles of the late-20th century. From the debates about the hole in the ozone layer to Silent Spring, the ECD played a pivotal role. Helping the visitor to see those connections is a little like building an ecological system for the museum. Each piece depends upon its positioning, its place, and its connections for the story to unfold in precisely the right way. And, with luck, the story will keep evolving.

Jody Roberts is program manager for environmental history and policy in the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at CHF

Does science always have to be 100% serious? Is it all right to laugh at one’s own research while at the same time being totally committed to the seriousness of it?  Last week my questions were answered in the form of a visit from Marc Abrahams, editor of The Annals of Improbable Research and founder of the Ig Nobel Awards.  If you have never heard of them, the Ig Nobel awards are given every year to honor individuals whose research first makes you laugh (most of the time out loud) and then makes you think.  According to their Web site, the “prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative - and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.”  A truly noble cause.

Held at Harvard University, the Ig Nobel awards are always heavily attended and the prizes themselves are often presented by Nobel laureates.  Spectators, presenters, and winners are treated to a night of good fun and laughs; anything goes at the Ig Nobel awards, including an adorable 8-year-old girl that sits on the side of the stage and “politely” informs the winner when they have gone over their 1-minute acceptance speech time limit by telling them, “Please stop.  I’m bored!”  Highlights from previous years include an impromptu karaoke session by the present Nobel laureates in honor of the inventor of karaoke and a special ice cream flavor honoring an winners research in extracting vanilla from . . . I won’t ruin that for you, go and read that one for yourself.

To me the most important part of the Ig Nobels and The Annals of Improbable Research is that they remind us that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously, that life is too short to ignore the simple joys and humors present.  After all, I’m sure Albert Einstein laughed at himself on occasion, so why shouldn’t we?

Adding another dimension to Making Modernity will be a media column and interactive display located on the ground floor.  Standing 20 feet tall and 4 feet wide, this column will contain a web of plasma screens displaying a unique video presentation of the elements of the periodic table. 

 You can get a taste of this interactive periodic table at this website. However, seeing this presentation on a small computer monitor will not compare to what we will see in a few months.

Visitors who wish to learn additional information on various themes within the gallery can interact with a large-format touch screen display near the media column.  Detailed information included will cover the elements of the periodic table, expansions on the stories explored in other parts of the exhibition, as well as new themes that have not been touched upon within the gallery.

These audiovisual features for Making Modernity are being constructed by a team of people from several states and the United Kingdom.  Theo Gray, Max Whitby, and David Brock are just a few of the team members working on this project.   We are all excited to see the outcome of this display!

Fascination, curiosity, and the search for a tiny screwdriver: such is the reaction of millions of little boys who first see an old-fashioned watch, its clockwork full of little wheels and escapements begging to be dismantled.

Dismay, anger and the search for a large bat - these are the reactions of their dads when they discover that Junior has taken apart their most prized possession. But while both boys and dads agree that these little masterpieces are irreplaceable when it comes to fun (for the young) and value (for the breadwinner), they have become replaceable in everyday life: most of us carry a quartz or digital watch that will wear out long before our own lives draw to an end.

A few hundred years ago the objects of many men’s desire (and in many men’s pockets) were astrolabes, instruments that could be used as a watch, a compass, a measuring device, a star map, and many other things. It would not have been much fun to take them apart: like other “gadgets” of the 1600s (navigational instruments and calculator discs), astrolabes are made out of a changeable disc, a ring surrounding it, and a metal pointer. The disc, engraved with marks, needed to be very precise if the astrolabe were to work perfectly. Made out of metal by specialists, astrolabes sold at a price beyond many men’s means. But some early modern books contained paper instruments similar to their big metal brothers. These so-called “volvelles” were paper discs, fixed to a page with a thread so that they could be rotated. Specific alignments of the markings on the discs’ edges would tell the time, figure out the stars, or lead to safe shores.

Why should this be exciting to us? Well, there is much more to paper and instruments than just the 0.0038 inch-thickness of a sheet of paper! Think about drawings of instruments not yet constructed and about paper models which make mere ideas come alive to scientists. In Making Modernity, we will be showing a multitude of objects from the history of chemistry which have been translated from idea to sketch, from the page to the lab; which have been taken apart and put together in a fortuitously “wrong” way; and things from the past which may yet be de- and reconstructed in the future. Where will Making Modernity lead your thoughts?

If you have ever been to a museum, you are no doubt familiar with the small labels that tell you what each object is, from where it came, and its date.  I always referred to these as “labels” or “captions.” Little did I know back when I was a kid and started going to museums that they have a name - they are called tombstones.

Yes, when an artifact finds its final resting place, it gets a tombstone.

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, our writers have been hard at work on the gallery script for many weeks now.  As deadlines rapidly approach, the fervor has reached a fever pitch.  Amanda and I have been charged with writing the first drafts (and sometimes second and third and fourth) of the tombstones, a task that seems simple, but at times proves quite daunting.  When we’re really lucky, the object’s provenance is readily available in a manufacturer’s mark on the instrument or a record of the object’s sale or gift that includes this information.  When we’re not so lucky, then we must do research, an act that makes me wonder everyday what in the world I did without the internet.  I spent a good deal of time last week peaking into the world of Bakelite collections - the myriad objects that have been made with this versatile material.  While it is difficult for me to tell at first glance whether this fish napkin ring comes from the 1960s or 1970s, I have no doubt that a true collector knows.

We start with what we know, then fill in as best we can with the information we glean from our research.  If we can’t find an exact date for when something was manufactured, we can usually estimate the time within a span of a few years (how useful the word “circa” can be).  Things get crossed out and questioned and revised through a process that will likely continue straight up through the museum opening, and likely beyond.  Multiple sets of eyes look over every tombstone for accuracy, concision, and formatting.  And then other sets look again.  As with all aspects of Making Modernity, we strive for perfection and we look forward to you seeing the fruits of our labors in the fall.