The Polytechnic Museum () is one of the oldest

science museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, Industry (manufacturing), industry and Outline of industrial ...

s in the world and is located in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

. It showcases

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n and

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

technology and science, as well as modern inventions. It was founded in 1872 after the first All-Russian Technical Exhibition on the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of

Peter the Great Peter I (, ; – ), better known as Peter the Great, was the Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of Russia, Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned j ...

at the initiative of the Society of Devotees of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography.Polytechnic Museum
History
/ref> The first stage of the museum was designed by Ippolit Monighetti and completed in 1877. The north wing was added in 1896 and the south wing in 1907. The Polytechnic Museum is the largest technical museum in Russia, and houses a wide range of historical inventions and technological achievements, including humanoid automata of the 18th century, and the first Soviet computers. The collection contains over 160,000 items in 65 halls including,

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

transport Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land tr ...

energy Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of optical instruments, instruments that use or Photodetector, detect it. Optics usually describes t ...

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...

computer engineering Computer engineering (CE, CoE, or CpE) is a branch of engineering specialized in developing computer hardware and software. It integrates several fields of electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science. Computer engi ...

radio electronics Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connected to ...

communications Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...

, and

space exploration Space exploration is the process of utilizing astronomy and space technology to investigate outer space. While the exploration of space is currently carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, its physical exploration is conducted bo ...

. Highlights include the first

achromatic telescope The achromatic telescope is a refracting telescope that uses an achromatic lens to correct for chromatic aberration. How it works When an image passes through a lens, the light is refracted at different angles for different wavelengths. This re ...

; an early solar microscope by German anatomists

Johann Nathanael Lieberkühn Johann Nathanael Lieberkühn (5 September 1711, in Berlin – 7 October 1756, in Berlin) was a German physician. His middle name is sometimes misspelled ''Nathaniel''. Lieberkühn studied theology initially, and then moved to physics, in particu ...

; an early seismograph by Boris Borisovich Galitzine; galvanoplastics by

Moritz von Jacobi Moritz Hermann von Jacobi (; 21 September 1801 – 10 March 1874), also known as Boris Semyonovich Yakobi (), was a German-Russian electrical engineer and physicist. Motors Jacobi began to study magnetic motors in 1834. In 1835 moved to Dorpat ...

; and early electric lights by

Pavel Yablochkov Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov (also transliterated as Jablochkoff; ; – ) was a Russian electrical engineer, businessman and the inventor of the Yablochkov candle, a type of electric carbon arc lamp. Biography Yablochkov graduated in 1866 a ...

History

The Society of Devotees of Natural Science was formed in Moscow in 1863. The society's first President was Gregory Ephimovich Shchurovsky and he together with other leading members of the society discussed having a museum. Their first move in this direction was to establish a library this held books documenting the history of science and technology. This became the Central Polytechnic Library but this established their ambitions. In 1871 Moscow council set aside half a million roubles to create a museum. A committee was formed with Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich as an honorary chair. The formation of a museum was timely as

's 200th anniversary would inspire the All-Russian Technical Exhibition that would be used to launch the new museum.The Polytechnical Museum opened in Moscow
Presidential Library, Retrieved 17 November 2015 Since June 2023, the president of the museum is the head of the

Kurchatov Institute The Kurchatov Institute (, National Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute") is Russia's leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear power, nuclear energy. It is named after Igor Kurchatov and is located at 1 Kurchatov Sq ...

, Mikhail Kovalchuk. 1872 All-Russian Technical Exhibition in Moscow

Collections

As of January 1, 2013 the museum fund of the museum consisted of 229,348 items. The collection of computing equipment is the most comprehensive display in Russia and includes rare copyrights devices, such as automated

abacus An abacus ( abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a hand-operated calculating tool which was used from ancient times in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, until the adoption of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. A ...

Viktor Bunyakovsky Viktor Yakovlevich Bunyakovsky (; ; – ) was a Russian mathematician, member and later vice president of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Bunyakovsky was a mathematician, noted for his work in theoretical mechanics and number theory (see: ...

, one of the first models of Odner's adding machine, the only surviving copy of the domestic computer "Ural", hydraulic integrator by Vladimir Lukyanov, the world's only computer based on

ternary logic In logic, a three-valued logic (also trinary logic, trivalent, ternary, or trilean, sometimes abbreviated 3VL) is any of several many-valued logic systems in which there are three truth values indicating ''true'', ''false'', and some third value ...

, "Syetun" and many other rarities.

Modernization

On the basis of the decree of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Development Fund of the Polytechnic Museum held a tender for the development of the museum concept. As a result of a choice from 14 competitive bids provided by Russian and foreign companies specializing in museum design, British company

Event Communications Event Communications, or Event, is one of Europe's longest-established and largest museum and visitor attraction design firms; it is headquartered in London. History The firm was founded in 1986 by businesswoman Celestine ("Cel") Phelan and des ...

was selected.

Public lectures

In addition to its function as a museum, the Polytechnic Museum has been an important place for the dissemination of science and culture in Russian. From 1913 to 1918 it was the centre of discussions about

Russian avant-garde The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its e ...

, with public lectures given by

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...

, David Burlyuk,

Andrei Bely Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (, ; – 8 January 1934), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. Hi ...

, Alexei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov. In the period of the

Khrushchev thaw The Khrushchev Thaw (, or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when Political repression in the Soviet Union, repression and Censorship in ...

, its main auditorium was the place for public performances of Andrei Voznesensky, Robert Rozhdestvensky and

Bulat Okudzhava Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava (; ka, ბულატ ოკუჯავა; ; May 9, 1924 – June 12, 1997) was a Soviet and Russian poet, writer, musician, novelist, and singer-songwriter of Georgian-Armenian ancestry. He was one of the founders o ...

. This was also a place for popular science lectures given by

Élie Metchnikoff Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (; – 15 July 1916), also spelled Élie Metchnikoff, was a zoologist from the Russian Empire of Moldavian noble ancestry and alshereat archive.org best known for his research in immunology (study of immune systems) and ...

Alexander Fersman Alexander Evgenyevich Fersman (; 8 November 1883 – 20 May 1945) was a prominent Soviet Union, Soviet Russian geochemist and mineralogist, and a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1919–1945). Early life and education Fersman was bor ...

and

Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (, ; ; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and old quantum theory, quantum theory, for which he received the No ...

.About Public Lectures at the Polytechnical Museum (in Russian)
/ref>

References

External links

Polytechnic Museum

State Polytechnic Museum (Moscow)

— 3d model {{authority control Museums established in 1872 Buildings and structures completed in 1877 Museums in Moscow Science museums in Russia History of science museums Technology museums in Russia 1872 establishments in the Russian Empire Cultural heritage monuments of regional significance in Moscow Museums in the Soviet Union