POWERHOUSE MUSEUM

Description

Essentials about the Powerhouse Museum in brief

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney is considered Australia’s largest and best-known museum and is definitely worth a visit, not only for technology fans. It is often described as a technology museum. However, this only does limited justice to the scope of the museum, because a much broader range of topics is covered in 22 permanent and several special exhibitions on approx. 20,000 square meters: History, communications, transportation, space exploration, clothing, furniture, design, media, music, and more are all part of the Powerhouse Museum’s exhibition scope.

The history of the Powerhouse Museum

Historically, the museum dates back to Australia’s first international exhibition in 1879. After the end of the exhibition, the government bought up many of the highlights of the exhibition and thus created the basis for the Technological Industrial and Sanitary Museum. After several changes of name and location, the museum finally found a new home in 1988 in a former power station, which also gave the museum its name. Officially, the Powerhouse Museum is still part of the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (the other part is the Sydney Observatory).

The collection of the Powerhouse Museum

Today, the Powerhouse Museum owns a massive collection of over 400,000 exhibits. Highlights include the oldest preserved and operational steam engine with flywheel and planetary gears for converting linear piston motion into rotary motion from 1785. The Frigate Bird II seaplane is the largest of all the exhibits. And the heaviest exhibit is considered to be the steam locomotive No. 3830 from the New South Wales Government Railways.

Also in the museum is the first steam locomotive to run in New South Wales, Locomotive No. 1, built in 1854 by Robert Stephenson. It is probably the only surviving example of its series. The biggest crowd puller of all the exhibits is probably the working model of the astronomical clock in Strasbourg Cathedral built by Richard Bartholomew Smith from 1887-1889. Smith had never seen the original, but worked only from a description and an illustration on a postcard.