CHSI


David P. Wheatland, cont.

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Click here to view a brief video clip of Mr. Wheatland
interviewed in 1985 by former CHSI curator Will Andrewes.

Mr. Wheatland made another spectacular find on top of an apparatus cabinet in the laboratory of physicist Kenneth Bainbridge.  It was a divided brass circle mounted vertically, which Bainbridge claimed he was saving to make a student spectrograph.  It turned out to be a fine dip circle selected by Benjamin Franklin for Harvard in 1765 at the shop of Edward Nairne in London (Inv. no. 0026).

Rescue missions became a regular and legendary part of Mr. Wheatland’s curatorial program.  He was often joined in them by his wife Elizabeth (Betty) Hinckley Wheatland, and beginning in the 1960s by Ebenezer Gay, the devoted assistant curator for the Collection.

The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments continued to grow under Mr. Wheatland’s care and relocated several times.  After the Semitic Museum basement, it moved first to the basement of Perkins Hall, then in 1973 to the Allston Burr Lecture Hall, and in 1979-1980 to the basement of the Science Center.   


Mr. Wheatland also began his own private collection of instruments with the idea of supplementing and filling in the gaps in the Harvard Collection.  His collection included over 700 sundials and a similar number of dialing books, over 3000 early vacuum tubes and some of the first transistors, many radios and radar devices, telephone prototypes and meteorological firsts, as well as significant instruments related to the history of astronomy, navigation, surveying, and physics.  He had a real knack for knowing what would be of fundamental historical importance long before anyone else thought to save it.  These items were stored in a stone house, barn, and Quonset hut dubbed the Radar-Radio Shed on Mr. Wheatland’s farm in Topsfield.   

In 1968, Mr. Wheatland published The Apparatus of Science at Harvard, 1765-1800 and by the 1970s, he and Gay were showing off some of the instruments in the annual lectures that Professor Cohen delivered to sophomores concentrating in History and Science.  In 1976, I attended one of these lectures and decided to stop by Allston Burr the next week to learn more about the instruments. Apparently I was the first student to do this. I was thoroughly charmed by the two curators, who invited me to come again.  When I returned the following week, I was greeted with “Looks like we have a live one here, Eben!” –“Better sign her up, Mr. Wheat.” And so I became their apprentice.    

Mr. Wheatland had a longstanding belief in the value of the Collection as a resource for understanding of the past and a vision for its use in research and teaching.  In this belief and vision, he was way ahead of his time. By the time of his death in 1993, thousands of scientific instruments, books, maker’s catalogues, and manuals had been donated to the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments and another 4,600 rare imprints had been given to Houghton Library.  Even more critically, he insured the future of the Collection by establishing an endowment, the income from which supports a curator and other operating costs.   

Approximately ninety-five percent of the apparatus, books, and other items in the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments were touched by David P. Wheatland.  They were rescued, conserved, documented, and housed, bought, donated, treasured, and shared.  Without his vision and unstinting generosity, this Collection would not exist.   

  

Dr. Sara J. Schechner
David P. Wheatland Curator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

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Putnam Gallery
Science Center 136
Hours:
Monday - Friday
11:00am - 4:00pm


Special Exhibitions Gallery
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Foyer Exhibition Space
Science Center 371
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Children must be escorted by an adult.

Both the Putnam Gallery and Special Exhibitions are closed on University Holidays.

Inquiries: 617-495-2779

 

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The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments is located inside the Science Center, 1 Oxford Street, on Harvard's Cambridge campus.