Never Been Seen: Science Museum Group Collection | Hacker News Reader

Never Been Seen: Science Museum Group Collection

thesciencemuseum.github.io

One of my first breaks in IT was freelance work on the Science Museum website back when they didn't know anyone who could make web sites. I was in my early 20s and someone I knew from the pub had a mum who was a curator. She asked her son if he knew anyone because "web developer" was a fairly uncommon skill!

I eventually got crowded out by a proper agency but I've still got clients in the culture sector that I got from word of mouth from that. My company is still doing stuff as a direct result of that contact.

(I'm 49 so do the maths yourself)

We might know each other. I was head of web at The Science Museum from 2000-2007 :-)

Ha! We might have just missed each other.

I built the original "Collections" section and then CogApps took over in about 1999.

This is the last version I could find on the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/19981205004229/http://www.nmsi.a...

I worked on Collections, a couple of special topic sections (Fusion and Science Museum in Japan), Exhiblets... I later helped with the touchscreens for the opening of the Wellcome Wing and then I started working with the NMDC - who are still a (hopefully happy) client.

This page survived into your tenure: https://web.archive.org/web/20010427104747/http://www.scienc...

God. Left aligned, fixed width at about 800px. Headings as gifs... Oh how things were different then...

I like it. Those days of simplistic charm... ~sigh~

Here's the code behind this site:

https://github.com/TheScienceMuseum/never-been-seen/blob/mas...

It requests an application/json response from the API at https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/search/images/?..., which returns metadata for an apparently random image (which may indeed be a 'never been seen' image, depending on what the backend does).

To save yourself seeing a blocky thumbnail before clicking through, just go to that API URL in your browser and refresh at your leisure.

Even better, change the value of the 'random' parameter so you can view more of these images at once:

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/search/images/?...

So this shows you items from The Science Museum (UK) that have never been viewed by someone on their website. Pretty cool idea, although some of the items are a bit weird. I got "Glass piston action vaginal syringe".

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co14198...

... I too got a vaginal syringe. A pewter one. I assume they have a lot of vaginal syringes, then.

A search suggests they have at least 139: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/search/objects/...

See also Wikipedia, which gives enough information that I can see why these are in the collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaginal_syringe

see for context https://twitter.com/dancohen/status/1350831682350415872

For the sake of longevity and shared human curiosity, it would be better off as something like "Rare finds: the least viewed items", because if it's just never viewed, don't underestimate how bored some people can get in the afternoon ya know?

Very interesting, thanks!

Some of these have much more text associated with them than others (e.g. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co87277...) and it's a shame to think that people have gone to the effort of photographing them and writing them up and nobody has seen them (yet).

I guess that this URL will stop returning results eventually. I hope nobody is antisocial enough to write a script to request all the items.

This one has lots of linked records under it: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/documents/aa110...

Including the interestingly-named "Works photographic negative of fan house before explosion, Hulton": https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/documents/aa110...

After a little googling, I think this might refer to Hulton colliery, where there was a bad underground explosion (ignition of coal dust and gas) in 1910, killing 344 people. This long account of the accident https://www.nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/accidents-disasters/lancas... talks about the large electric fans used to ventilate the mines.

It's mind boggling to think about the tremendous amount of objects and history in the vaults of museum that most have never seen before, because there is simply not enough room to display it.

It means the image in the database has zero views.

I suppose given their claims, a caching strategy would be beside the point :)

When I'm bored, in the shower, or just day dreaming I sometimes like to think about what it'd be like if I was a multi-millionaire or billionaire. One thing I imsgine myself doing is giving giant donations to museums with the only request that they let me wander around various warehouses and storage areas.

I like history and old stuff, and it just boggles the mind what they must have back there. Especially when I read articles about someone "rediscovering" some old or obscure item because it wasnt catalogued when it was put into storage, or the record was lost.

Visiting Zurich's design museum a few years ago I had that experience -- just showed up at the right time, and since there was no one else on the tour, I got the full warehouse tour (for free!). It was amazing - sometimes you just get lucky ;)

I think if you ask nicely they might let you anyway.

Speaking of museums and archiving, currently there are a lot of archive materials that cannot be accessed or even digitised because of COVID and thus cannot be viewed by the public. Its obviously not a priority but it is a little worrying.

I think the github.io site got hugged to death with the images not loading from https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/ I suspect it will be back up after the initial thundering herd finishes up.

I'm having second thoughts about posting this now :( considering a caching strategy would have been out of the question for them given the claims of what this site is.

The science museum is not a tiny organisation.. they're one of the top museums in the UK funded with taxpayer money.

They're closed right now due to covid, and they ought to be digital/online savvy and able to handle a few million clicks in a day for this kind of thing.

This is surprisingly addictive. My favorite so far: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co80367...

considering that I have a penchant for Mazda vehicles, I was happy to see my first visit brought me a Mazda headlamp (with box!)

great idea, definitely fun to explore.

I wonder if there could be something like this for the http://muttermuseum.org

“Be the first to see” except you know the person who photographed the item, and the person who wrote the item’s description, and the person who fetched the item from storage so it can be photographed and many more.

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