Powerhouse entry

The Powerhouse Museum is Sydney's museum of science and technology. It has existed in various guises for 125 years, and is home to some 400,000 artefacts, many of which are housed in the site it has occupied since 1988, and for which it is named - a converted electric tram energy generating station in the Inner West suburb of Ultimo, originally constructed in 1902. Image File history File links Powerhouse_entry. ... Image File history File links Powerhouse_entry. ... A typical exhibit at a modern science museum. ... ... 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... King Street in Newtown, an inner-city suburb of Sydneys Inner West The Inner West of Sydney is an area which encompasses the inner-city suburbs of Sydney located immediately adjacent to, and west of the central business district. ... Ultimo is a suburb in central Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. ... 1902 (MCMII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ...

History

The Powerhouse Museum's origins date to 1879, when the Sydney International Exhibition was held in the Garden Palace, a purpose-built exhibition building located in the grounds of the Royal Botanic Gardens. At the conclusion of the Exhibition the Australian Museum (Sydney's museum of natural history) appointed a committee to select the best exhibits, with the intention of exhibiting them permanently in a new museum to be sited within the Garden Palace. The new museum was to be called The Technological, Industrial and Sanitary Museum of New South Wales, and its purpose was to exhibit the latest industrial, construction and design innovations, with the intention of showing how improvements in the living standards and health of the population might be brought about. 1879 (MDCCCLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Sydneys Garden Palace; an architectural drawing from the 1870s. ... The Royal Botanic Gardens is a 30 hectare site located beside Sydneys Central Business District. ... The Australian Museum is the oldest museum in Australia, centering on natural history and anthropology, with collections centering on vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, as well as minerology, palaeontology, and anthropology. ...

Unfortunately, in September 1882 before the new museum could be opened a fire completely destroyed the Garden Palace, leaving the museum's first curator, Joseph Henry Maiden with a collection consisting of one artefact - a carved graphite Ceylonese elephant statue that had miraculously survived the blaze unscathed despite a 5-storey plunge. Look up September in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... 1882 (MDCCCLXXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Genera and Species Loxodonta Loxodonta cyclotis Loxodonta africana Elephas Elephas maximus Elephas recki † Stegodon † Mammuthus † Elephantidae (the elephants) is a family of pachyderm, and the only remaining family in the order Proboscidea. ...

Undaunted, Maiden commenced rebuilding the collection, but for the subsequent decade the new museum found itself housed in a large tin shed in the Domain - a facility it shared with the Sydney Hospital morgue. The ever-present stench of decaying corpses was not the best advertisement for an institution dedicated to the promotion of sanitation, and eventually, after intense lobbying the museum was relocated to a three storey building in Harris Street, Ultimo, and simultaneously given a new name - the Technological Museum. Domain has several meanings: // General some kind of territory, such as (for example) a demesne or a realm synonymous with a metaphorical field, e. ... This article needs cleanup. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

The new location placed the museum in Harris Street, adjacent to the Sydney Technical College, and as such it was intended to provide material inspiration to the working men being trained there. As time passed it also established branches in some of New South Wales' main industrial and mining centres, including Broken Hill, Albury, Newcastle and Maitland. It also quickly outgrew the main Harris Street site and by 1978 the situation had become dire, with many exhibits literally stuffed into its attic, and left unexhibited for decades. Harris Street is the main thoroughfare in the inner western suburbs of Ultimo and Pyrmont, Sydney, Australia. ... The Sydney Technical College was a name used by Australias oldest technical education institution. ... Broken Hill Post Office Royal Exchange Hotel, Broken Hill Broken Hill street, with the Indian Pacific and the actual broken hill visible in the background Broken Hill Broken Hill (31°57′S 141°27′E) is an isolated mining city and Local Government Area in the far west of outback... Albury, as viewed from the War Memorial Albury (postcode: 2640, ) is a city in New South Wales, located on the Hume Highway on the Northern side of the Murray River. ... A view of Newcastle from Stockton Newcastle is Australias sixth largest city and the second largest in the state of New South Wales. ... Maitland is a city in the Lower Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia, on the Hunter River approximately 200 km by road north of Sydney and 30 km northwest of Newcastle. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...

On August 23 of that year, New South Wales Premier Neville Wran announced that the decrepit Ultimo Power Station, several hundred metres north of the old Harris Street site (at the time called the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences), had been earmarked as the museum's new permanent home, and it re-opened as the Powerhouse Museum at the new site in 1988. The main museum building encloses a space larger than that of the Sydney Opera House, and today contains five levels, three courtyards, a basement and a storage building - however the size and continually expanding nature of the museum's collection means that sizeable offsite storage facilities are also maintained. Emblems: Floral - Waratah (Telopea Speciosissima); Bird - Kookaburra (Dacelo Gigas); Animal - Platypus (Ornithorhynchus Anatinus); Fish - Blue Groper (Achoerodus Viridis) Motto: Orta Recens Quam Pura Nites (Newly Risen, How Brightly You Shine) Slogan or Nickname: First State, Premier State Other Australian states and territories Capital Sydney Government Governor Premier Const. ... The Honourable Neville Kenneth Wran AC, QC, (born October 11, 1926) was the Premier of New South Wales in 1976 until 1986. ... The Sydney Opera House is one of the most iconic landmarks in the world, and since its opening it has become a symbol of Sydney The Sydney Opera House is located at , in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. ...

Following its closure as a working observatory in 1982, Sydney Observatory was incorporated into the Powerhouse Museum. 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The observatory photographed in 1874 The observatory today The Sydney Observatory evolved from a fort built on Windmill Hill in the Sydney central area now known as The Rocks, to an astronomical observatory during the nineteenth century. ...

Eastern side of Powerhouse

Image File history File links Eastern_side_of_powerhouse. ... Image File history File links Eastern_side_of_powerhouse. ...

Key attractions

The Powerhouse Museum houses a number of unique exhibits, including one of only a handful of Boulton and Watt steam engines, still in operation. This machine was built in 1785, and was acquired from Whitbread's London Brewery in 1888. Another important exhibit is the No 1 Locomotive built by Robert Stephenson in 1854, which was the first locomotive to operate in New South Wales. The most popular exhibit is arguably the Strasbourg Clock, built in 1887 by a 25-year old Sydney watchmaker named Richard Smith. It is a working model of the famous astronomical clock in Strasbourg's Notre Dame cathedral. Smith had never actually seen the original when he built it. The firm of Boulton and Watt, a partnership between Matthew Boulton and James Watt, made steam engines at their Soho Foundry in Smethwick, near Birmingham, England. ... A steam engine is an external combustion heat engine that makes use of the thermal energy that exists in steam, converting it to mechanical work. ... 1785 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... 1888 (MDCCCLXXXVIII) is a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. ... Statue of Robert Stephenson at Euston Station, London Robert Stephenson FRS (October 16, 1803–October 12, 1859) was an English civil engineer. ... 1854 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1887 (MDCCCLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Saturday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. ... City flag City coat of arms Coordinates : , Time Zone : CET (GMT +1) Administration Département Bas-Rhin (67) Région Alsace Mayor Fabienne Keller (UMP) (since 2001) Intercommunality Urban Community of Strasbourg City (commune) Characteristics Land Area 78. ...

New storage facility

Ninety five percent of the Powerhouse Museum's collection is maintained in storage at any one time. Sixty percent of this was due to be moved in late 2004 to a new three hectare site in the northwestern Sydney suburb of Castle Hill. Built at a cost of AUD $12 million, this facility consists of seven huge sheds, including one the size of an aircraft hangar, within which are to be housed such recently-rediscovered artefacts as a section of the mast of HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, and the spare wheel from Bluebird, the car Donald Campbell drove to break the world land speed record on Lake Eyre in the 1960s. The Powerhouse at Castle Hill is scheduled to open to the general public in 2006. 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Castle Hill is a suburb in the northwest of Sydney in Australia, about 30 kilometres north-west of the central business district. ... HMS Victory is a 104-gun ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built between 1759 and 1765. ... Lord Nelson Nelson redirects here; for other uses, see Nelson (disambiguation). ... Combatants United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland First French Empire, Spain Commanders The Viscount Nelson † Pierre Charles Silvestre de Villeneuve Strength 27 ships of the line, 4 frigates, 2 others France: 18 ships of the line, 8 others Spain: 15 ships of the line Casualties 449 killed; 1,214... Donald Malcolm Campbell (March 23, 1921 - January 4, 1967) was a British car and motorboat driver who broke many speed records. ... Composite satellite image of Lake Eyre using shortwave infrared, near-infrared, and blue wavelengths. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Exhibitions

The museum hosts a number of permanent exhibitions including:

• Cyberworlds

This exhibition is about computers and connections through them, and looks at the very first computing machines to the latest designs at the time of launch.

• Space - beyond this world

This exhibition looks at space and man's discoveries relating to it. It includes a life size model space-shuttle cockpit.

• Experimentations

A very popular exhibit due to the number of interactive displays featured. These include a chocolate tasting machine, a model firetruck that uses pedal-power to sound its horn, and a hand-powered model railroad.

• Transport

This exhibition looks at transport through the ages.

The museum has also hosted a number of blockbuster exhibitions in recent years. The most popular of these were those based on popular cinmema franchises such as Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars. The first season DVD box set of the original Star Trek television series from 1966. ... Dust jacket of the 1968 UK edition The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy story by J. R. R. Tolkien, a sequel to his earlier work, The Hobbit. ... The cover of the 2004 DVD widescreen release of the modified original Star Wars Trilogy. ...

Online collections

• Powerhouse Museum Collection
• Photography of Hedda Morrison
• Electronic Swatchbook
• The Tyrrell Photographic Collection
• Sydney 2000 Games Collection
• Australia Innovates

External links

• Powerhouse Museum official website
• Sydney Observatory official website

References

• "Treasure Trove: 125 Years of the Powerhouse Museum" by Steve Meacham, Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum), 18-19 September, 2004, pp 1-4