Musee des Arts et Metiers

Foucault's pendulum

July 8: Rob skipped today's talks and we took the train to Paris for a look at the Musee des Arts et Metiers.  Another fantastic museum!  This is the National Conservatory of Arts and Industry, founded in 1794 as a repository for the preservation of scientific instruments and inventions.  Of the 80,000 objects and 15,000 drawings in the collection, about 2,500 are on display.  I wanted to take photos of almost everything.

The museum is housed in the deserted priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs which was renovated in 1990 and now includes the attached three level priory building. The largest objects such as planes and cars are displayed in the church along with Foucault's original pendulum. The seven different collections are: scientific instruments, materials, energy, mechanics,construction, communication, transportation. 

Clement Ader's Avion III

Among the most interesting of the many interesting items were:  the original model of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty, Louis Bleriot's plane, Clement Ader's Avion III, Joseph Cugnot's 1770 steam-driven "Fardier", the 1684 Marly machine used to raise water from the Seine to the Versaille fountains.  Please check out the photos for more of the rich holdings. (these are as yet uncaptioned.  check tomorrow)

We returned to Bures in late afternoon to attend the conference reception at a chateau in nearby Gif which is run by CNRF, the French scientific organization.