The Arts et Metiers conservatory was established in 1794 as an engineering/technical school. The associated museum displays scientific and technical…
Astrolab built in 1460-1465 (Germany), used to teach astronomy.
A portable set of standard oil measurement containers, 1741. They were used to validate the capacity of containers used by merchants in Paris.
Neper sticks, 17th century.
Pascals's calculator: Blaise Pascal invented this device aged 19. It could perform additions and subtractions, with an automated carry. This 1642 device is…
Mechanical globe by Guillaume de l'Isle, 1700.
Lavoisier's laboratory, 1785. Lavoisier was able to make water out of oxygen and hydrogen (and a spark) in this laboratory, proving that water was actually a…
Tools for mathematics, 18th century.
Groove, by 's Gravesande, late 18th century.
Set of weights. In France, prior to the 1789 revolution, each province (district) has its own reference for measurements.
Reference platinum meter (1799) and platinum kilogram (1799): during the French Revolution/civil war in the 1790s, need arose for a standardized measuring…
In 1792 definition of time was also changed to follow the decimal system, and decimal clocks were produced. The metric system is still used today, but not…
Foucault's pendulum, 1851. The brass sphere weighs 28kg and was used by Foucault in the Pantheon to demonstrate the rotation of Earth.
A system used by Foucault in 1862 to measure the speed of light. Physiscist Foucault could prove the speed of light was not infinite using a fast rotating…
Cyclotron of the College de France, 1937, used to study the properties of the matter.
Multiplicator by Leon Bollée, 1889.
Cray-2 supercomputer, 1985. The Cray-2 computers were used for up to 10 years. They relied on vectorial computations (computation were parallelized across…
Cray-2 supercomputer.
Memory storage elements: top left: magnetic core plane from the Gamma 60 computer (capacity: 512 bytes), 1960s; bottom left: magnetic core plane assembly from…
