Historical Collection of Physics Teaching Instruments

Introduction

These pages and their annexes present part of the collection of historical teaching apparatus of Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (UFOP), which was acquired in the early history of our Institution.

In order to make our proposal better understood, it is important to point out that, while UFOP is a relatively new University in our country, its foundation (1969) actually originated from the merging of three pre-existing higher education institutions, the School of Pharmacy (1839), the School of Mines (1876) and the School of Humanities (1969).

Here we focus on the Physics teaching apparatus that was acquired mostly by the School of Mines (Escola de Minas – EMOP), during the first few decades of its existence. The history of EMOP has been well described by Prof. José Murilo de Carvalho^[1].

Considering the origin (manufacturers or distributors) of the various items, one can notice an important similarity between our collection and those of other institutions (see next section).

In Brazil, actions of preservation of historical collections of science and technology (S&T) are very recent and have been led by Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins (MAST-founded in 1985), in cooperation with other institutions. An article by Granato & Lourenço^[2], shows that this pioneering work by MAST concerns a largely unexplored universe. In fact, according to our current knowledge, there are very few museums of S&T in our country (usually associated with 2nd-degree or 3rd-degree educational institutions) which do some preservation work on this type of cultural heritage.

So far, our collection has been largely unknown to the general public, or even to our academic community. So, we see the publication of these pages as a first step in the process of bringing visibility and documentation to the collection.

We finally make a record that the collection displayed here is only a part of what is physically available (in various conditions of preservation) at UFOP, so we hope that this presentation will be expanded in the future with additional work.

Prof. Djalma Nardy Domingues

Physics Department
Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (UFOP)

Ouro Preto, June 2019.

Subareas

The whole collection is divided into the following subareas (we have adopted the european terminology of the late XIX or early XX century): Acoustics, Mechanics of Liquids and Gases, Heat, Electricity, Electrodynamics, and Optics.

Within any given section, each equipment will be described on an individual page. For each instrument we suggest a bibliography which includes, in some cases, an article describing the context of its invention and short biography of the inventor.

Almost the entire collection (related, approximately, to the first five decades of EMOP) is of European origin (mostly French or German), and we could easily recognize its association with current programs of basic Physics, at freshman or sophomore levels.

The catalogues of various manufacturers were an important initial resource for our work. On the individual pages of the instruments one will often find references to Max Kohl, E. Leybold's Nachfolger, Les Fils d'Émile Deyrolle, Jules Duboscq, among others.

Other valuable sources that we reference are the virtual museums of several prestigious institutions (Smithsonian, Harvard University Collection of Scientific Instruments, University of Oxford History of Science Museum, University of Cambridge Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Museo Galileo and many others), where we could find many of the instruments that are also present in our collection. We specially aknowledge the extensive work by Prof. Thomas B. Grerenslade, Jr., published at Instruments for Natural Philosophy, where we could find a vast amount of authoritative information.

To find out how exactly, and to what extent, these teaching instruments were used at the EMOP didactic lab, in its early history, would be a hard task, due to the lack of record on this particular (but important) aspect of our academic history.

However, from an attentive examination of the whole collection and some evidence found in old textbooks and catalogues, we are tempted to draw a few conclusions: (i) a large investment was made in order to build the didactic laboratory, as we can infer from the large number of instruments acquired, as well as their quality of manufacturing; (ii) the laboratory classes had a more qualitative and demonstrative approach, being performed under the command of the instructor (in contrast with the current practice, when the students are encouraged to be more proactive); (iii) the Physics college program was quite modern for the time, as we clearly find out that many of the instruments were then related to fairly recent technical or scientific developments.

References

1. José Murilo de Carvalho, A Escola de Minas de Ouro Preto: O Peso da Glória, Editora UFMG (2002).

2. M. Granato e M. Lourenço (editores), Coleções Científicas Luso-Brasileiras: Patrimônio a Ser Descoberto,

MAST (2010).