Nostalgic exhibition marks International Museum Day

Kolkata: It was sheer nostalgia as inventions like typewriters, gramophones and musical box were showcased at an exhibition here on Friday to celebrate the International Museum Day.

The exhibition titled The Objects in the Archive was organised by the Central Research and Training Laboratory (CRTL), the research wing of National Council of Science Museums (NCSM).

"We have some industrial relics which were available with us in our archive and thought that this could be an occasion to showcase them for the public to see how technology has evolved, its origin and how one can connect with these objects," said Shrikant Pathak, the CRTL Director.

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Pathak said the exhibition will help the young generation to understand the pain taken in identifying and inventing things like typewriters, theodolites, etc.

The list of the unique artefacts displayed, include folding typewriter, electric typewriter, Smith Premier type writer, surveyors transit theodolite, rotary duplicating machine, musical box, gramophone, letter box, mechanical calculator, audio projector, 16 mm movie projector, radio, telephone magneto, Hypex Horn Loud speaker and micro computer.

These artefacts will help the smartphone-carrying generation to know about the roots.

"In spite of all the talk about interdisciplinarily, the divide between science and humanities seems to grow every passing year. One of the saddest things in today's world is that we tend to view the humanities and the sciences as two separate cultures," Victoria Memorial Curator Jayanta Sengupta said.

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Talking about the theme, Pathak said though interconnectivity is there, one should see things physically, everything cannot be seen on YouTube.

"People can have a sort of belongingness with these objects and this is the objective of showcasing our archive materials," Pathak mentioned about the exhibition commemorating the International Museum Day.

For this special day, an indigenously developed device named RAWAN (Remotely Accessible WiFi-based Audio Narrator) was introduced. This device has one access point which is installed beside the artefact and one receiver.

The receiver has to be carried by the visitor which enables them to hear information about the object displayed. It works on WiFi and at a low cost and low maintenance device.