Information Age is the newest permanent collection at London's Science Museum. It covers 200 years of telecommunications inventions, like the Soviet BESM-6 supercomputer from 1960s. Andrew Meredith for Universal Design Studio
Information Age is the newest permanent collection at London's Science Museum. It covers 200 years of telecommunications inventions, like the Soviet BESM-6 supercomputer from 1960s.
The giant wooden Rugby Radio Station tuner is in the 'Broadcast' section. It was used in England in the 1920s. Andrew Meredith for Universal Design Studio
The giant wooden Rugby Radio Station tuner is in the 'Broadcast' section. It was used in England in the 1920s.
The 2L0 was the BBC's first transmitter, and sent out the corporation's first radio program in 1922. Andrew Meredith for Universal Design Studio
The 2L0 was the BBC's first transmitter, and sent out the corporation's first radio program in 1922.
A replica of the Shabolovka radio tower is in the 'Broadcast' section of the exhibit. Built in Moscow in 1922, it was commissioned by Communist leader Vladimir Lenin. The original was often called the Eiffel Tower of Russia. Andrew Meredith for Universal Design Studio
A replica of the Shabolovka radio tower is in the 'Broadcast' section of the exhibit. Built in Moscow in 1922, it was commissioned by Communist leader Vladimir Lenin. The original was often called the Eiffel Tower of Russia.
To guide visitors through the exhibit, Universal Studio Design and the museum divided the artifacts into six sections. 'Exchange,' the rise of telephone networks, and 'Constellation,' a look at satellite technology, can be seen here. Andrew Meredith for Universal Design Studio
To guide visitors through the exhibit, Universal Studio Design and the museum divided the artifacts into six sections. 'Exchange,' the rise of telephone networks, and 'Constellation,' a look at satellite technology, can be seen here.
Behind the exhibit is an elevated wraparound walkway that gives visitors a chance to escape "gallery fatigue." Andrew Meredith for Universal Design Studio
Behind the exhibit is an elevated wraparound walkway that gives visitors a chance to escape "gallery fatigue."
The Eurostar communication satellite 3000, designed to provide Europe with communication to South America, hangs above the 'Constellation' section. Andrew Meredith for Universal Design Studio
The Eurostar communication satellite 3000, designed to provide Europe with communication to South America, hangs above the 'Constellation' section.
On the left, you can see colored cables from the 1968 CDC 6600 Super Computer made by Control Data Limited. Andrew Meredith for Universal Design Studio
On the left, you can see colored cables from the 1968 CDC 6600 Super Computer made by Control Data Limited.
Provided you’re not at a music festival or underground, all it takes to communicate with another human being is a tap on the “Send” button. What happens next—the instant data exchanges that zip over invisible channels connecting millions of phones to millions of cell towers—is the result of over 200 years of telecommunications developments that are now the subject of Information Age, the newest permanent exhibit at London’s Science Museum.
“[The exhibit] tells the story, which is very difficult to tell, of how we’ve communicated over long distances since the laying of the Transatlantic cable,” says Jay Osgerby, co-founder of Universal Design Studio, the firm that worked with the museum to build the exhibit. It’s a difficult story to tell because, as Osgerby explains, the telecommunications industry has never been about aesthetic beauty. In fact, it’s been the opposite, because the first phone call ever made was an intangible thing.
This challenge becomes more pronounced over time: “In the beginning, the Victorian period, you’re confronted with a very engaging and beautiful and decipherable object,” Osgerby says. “But once you get past the second World War, it becomes relatively abstract. By the time you’re in the 1980s you’re looking at stuff you’re wouldn’t think twice about buying from a boot fair.” The more advanced the industry becomes, and the more the objects on display look like consumer goods, the more difficult they are for curators to work with. Compare two artifacts from the exhibit: the 2LO transmitter that made the first BBC radio programs possible, and the Motorola V3688 flip phone from 1998. The 2LO is a massive, stunning display of ceramic and copper knobs. But visitors at the museum might have owned a flip phone like the V3688, and could easily skip right over it.
To get around that problem, the museum and Universal Design broke Information Age up into six zones: cable, exchange, broadcast, constellation, web, and cell. Each section gets its own architecture of rooms within rooms—Osgerby called them story boxes—that each use both audio and visual materials to describe a transformative event, like the first phone call, or how Americans used GPS in the first Gulf War. This helps focus attentions, but also lets visitors travel through time in a way that should let both kids and adults, who could easily be professionals in some of these industries, appreciate the significance of what’s on display. For a bird’s eye view of the exhibit’s floor plan, which Osgerby describes as like a town square, visitors can ascend to an upper level wraparound walkaway. This nixes any “gallery fatigue,” he says, but also acts as yet another layer through which guests can learn about the chronology of telecommunications.
Inevitably, and ironically, visitors who come to see Information Age will also be looking at their phones to send text messages, check email, and pick a spot for lunch after the museum. “I wish we could put the whole thing inside a Faraday cage just as an experiment,” Osgerby says. They can’t, but they did turn the entrance way into an anechoic chamber to, “cleanse the audio palate as you walk through the space.” And if visitors get distracted again later by their phones, so be it. Information Age is a celebration of the inventions that led up to each of us keeping a phone in our pocket.
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