Friday, November 4, 2011

A visit to the Musée des Arts et Metiers in Paris

Typed on Swissa Junior with Bulletin typeface
Blurry picture of Foucault's pendulum slowly toppling a cluster of metal rods (taken from awkward position behind tour guide's elbow!)

Now to the rest of the museum:

I called this a locomotive excavator, but I'm not really sure what the technical name for it is. I rather liked the look of it.

How Lady Liberty was built!

Vintage film projecting equipment.

This may look exactly like a Malling-Hansen writing ball, but it is really Alexis Kohl's automatic cryptograph that was based on Malling-Hansen's original design.

Early computing display... although with all the glass this ends up being more a picture of me :-)



The chapel's high ceilings are put to good use with the early transportation display. The pendulum is suspended from the middle of the arches in the background of this picture.

"Foucault's Bob" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "Foucault's Pendulum"... ah, the nuances lost in translation! (I know the bob refers to just the weight - the ball, if you will - but still.)

6 comments:

  1. Fascinating! The French seem justifiably proud of the Statue of Liberty - it's too bad that Franco-American attitudes are so degraded these days.

    PS: I recognize your big-font Swissa! What a great typestyle!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very neat! The Køhl device is fascinating.

    We have a Foucault pendulum in our physics building here and I've enjoyed watching it knock pegs over too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very interesting pictures, all -- but especially the one with your reflection!

    The shot of the twin phonographs with big flaring horn speakers took me off on a time-travel fantasy back to the early 1900s discotheque, waltzing the night away.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is great, Adwoa! Of course, I was most drawn to the vintage film projecting equipment.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love the juxtaposition of old church architecture and relatively new vintage technology. Airplanes have come a long way in 100 years - personal jet packs for all in 2111!

    The whole display is wonderful. I am also fascinated by the projection equipment.

    Also love the Swissa type face.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very nice and neat museum and things. The projection equipment and associated audio gear is especially interesting. Perhaps the first stereo. The wonderful sound of some of the old disk players can be astoundingly good.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment! Please note that comments are moderated; so this will be posted as soon as I have read it :)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...