Museums are where glories in the past are recorded. In Science Museum
and Natural History Museum, you can find the
secrets of nature and a
world that existed before the first human started to walk. In National
Railway Museum and National Space Centre, you can find how technology
has changed this world and the world beyond this planet.
Science Museum
The Science Museum on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, is
part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a
major London tourist attraction.
The Science Museum now holds a
collection of over 300,000 items,
including such famous items as Stephenson\''s Rocket, Puffing Billy
(another early locomotive), the first jet engine, a reconstruction of
Francis Crick and James Watson\''s model of DNA, some of the earliest
remaining steam engines, a working example of Charles Babbage\''s
Difference engine, and the first prototype of the 10,000-year Clock of
the Long Now. It also contains hundreds of interactive exhibits. A
recent addition is the IMAX 3D Cinema showing science and nature
documentaries, some of them in 3-D. Entrance has been free since
December 1, 2001.
The museum also houses some of the many objects collected by Henry
Wellcome around a medical theme. These are displayed up on the 4th and
5th floors, although the objects on display are a fraction of the
overall collection. The Science Museum has a dedicated library, and
until the 1960s was Britain\''s National Library for Science, Medicine
and Technology. It holds runs of periodicals, early books and
manuscripts, and is used by scholars world-wide.
National Railway Museum
The National Railway Museum (NRM) in York forms part of the British National Museum of Science and Industry.
The NRM contains a collection of over 100 locomotives and nearly 200
other items of rolling stock, together with many hundreds of thousands
of other items of railway historical interest (down to a lock of Robert
Stephenson\''s hair) displayed in three large halls of a former motive
power depot next to the East Coast Main Line, near York railway
station. The permanent display includes "Palaces on Wheels", a
collection of Royal Train coaches from Queen Victoria\''s early trains
to those used by Queen Elizabeth II up to the 1970s.
All items of rolling stock exhibited either ran on the railways of
Great Britain or were built there, with the single exception of a
Japanese "Series 0" Shinkansen bullet train leading vehicle, which was
donated to the NRM by the JR West railway company in 2001 and which now
forms part of an award-winning display.