Find out everything you need to know about visiting the collection and conducting research at the National Science and Media Museum.
Everyone is welcome to make an appointment to visit Insight: Collections & Research Centre, where you can inspect objects from our collection and make use of our comprehensive research library.
On these pages you can also learn about copying and licensing material from our archives, discover the research work we do, browse our directory for helpful information, and find out about donating an object to the museum.
Written by museum staff, researchers and volunteers, our blog is packed with hidden treasures and behind-the-scenes stories.
Adventures in audio—or how to get backstage with The Prodigy
Annie introduces you to our latest acquisition: the Midas XL3 mixing console, which has toured the UK with some of the world’s biggest bands and artists.
Using our collections: part 3
Researcher Kari Nixon writes about her work with material from our Kodak Collection.
Library highlights: Amateur film-making
Take a peek at some of the books and journals in our collection that deal with amateur film-making.
Using our collections: part 2
Visiting researcher Ana Maria Mauad writes about her work with photographs from South America in the Daily Herald archive.
Forgotten women in STEM: Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr was one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the silver screen. She was also responsible for inventing technology which paved the way for WiFi and GPS.
Bradford pirates: a tale of the (air)waves of 1980s and 90s Britain
Placement student Elaine Rhodes writes about her research into Bradford pirate radio.
Using our collections: part 1
Discover some of the exciting ways visitors use our collections—for research, general interest, and as inspiration for artistic projects.
New acquisitions: the Cottingley Fairies
The Marjorie Curtis Collection provides a host of intriguing artefacts which shed new light on the mysterious tale of the Cottingley Fairies.
Filming the Prince’s Derby, 1896
R.W. Paul’s film can be considered one of the earliest examples of newsreel footage. Curator Toni Booth takes a closer look.
Hidden treasures of our collection: snapshots of the last Tsar
Kendra, our Collections Assistant, shares an exciting discovery from the museum’s print archive: snapshots from the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II in May 1896.
The Science Museum Group Journal is a peer-reviewed journal published twice yearly. It presents papers about science, its history, material culture, communication and presentation in museums.
Wired-up in white organdie: framing women’s scientific labour at the Burden Neurological Institute
This article explores how photographs of scientific workers at the Burden Neurological Institute ‘frame’ women’s labour in particular ways so as to devalue, obscure and erase their contributions.
Sound and vision
Issue 7 of the Journal collects scholarly articles from sound and vision research across the Science Museum Group—with topics ranging from NHS glasses to the Victorian science of singing.
Capturing the song of the nightingale
The first outside broadcast made by the BBC from a natural location was the Nightingale broadcast of 19 May 1924. It was made possible by the Marconi-Sykes magnetophone (pictured).
Moments of danger: photography, institutions and the history of the future
Our exhibition Revelations: Experiments in Photography examined the relationship between scientific photography and art. What might this tell us about how we present, and thus create, history in a museum context?
