2009-2012 – Museum Of Communication
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2009-2012
In
2009
we took part in the national
‘Homecoming Scotland’
event, with a fabulous exhibition of
Great Scots who Changed the World
as inventors and innovators in the field of communication.
We found so many
Great Scots
that in
2010
, we simply added to the list! The amazing Mary Somerville (1780 – 1872), spent all her formative years in Burntisland …. Somerville College Oxford is named in her honour, as are an island within the Arctic Circle, a Lunar crater and an asteroid!
In 2011, with our ‘Great Scots’ back into storage, we produced
Words, Wires, Waves – and the World Wide Web
which traced some of the major developments in communications over the last few hundred years.
The
WORDS
section displayed several elderly ‘hands-on’ typewriters and told the story of how the introduction of this machine and the invention of Pitman shorthand revolutionised commercial practice across the world.
WIRES
came next, with examples of early
Electric Telegraphy
, including the beautiful diamond-shaped Cooke & Wheatstone electric telegraph (1839) that was used on the Great Western Railway.
We illustrated
WAVES
with a few ‘milestone’ examples drawn from the history of radio and television.
The exhibition ended with sections devoted to computers, tracing developments from the 1940s up to the
WORLD WIDE WEB
….
Our
2012 Exhibition
Attention All Shipping
told the story of some of the major developments in maritime communications over the last 200 years. It started with the role played by the Stevenson family of Lighthouse Builders. There was a section about shipwrecks in which, with valuable input from Burntisland Heritage Trust, we were able to detail the biggest wreck in the Forth – HMS
Campania
– that lies just outside Burntisland. The Morse key from the German battleship
Grosser Kurfurst –
one of the Museum’s most prized artefacts – made a prominent appearance. We also displayed ‘State of the Art’ multi beam sonar images, reproduced with permission from Advanced Underwater Surveys Ltd (ADUS). We unravelled the mysteries of the shipping forecast and recalled the Pirate Radio stations of the 1960s. We were also grateful to the RNLI for their very significant input into the exhibition and asked our visitors to support their good work.
Finally we devoted one section to the
Titanic
tragedy, in its centenary year. On display were artefacts of the period – including Spelterware figurines, magic lantern, typewriter, telephones and gramophones – and we drew a chilling comparison between
Titanic
and the foundering of the cruise ship
Costa Concordia.