Essay Review: Preserving Instruments from 19th Century France

摘要

A wind of conservation is blowing around scientific instruments in France. It sprang up as a gentle breeze in the early 1990s with the launching of a project to inventory and to preserve the astronomical heritage of the observatories of the nation. While this was gathering form however, other air currents were eddying below it as passionate amateurs, active from at least the 1970s brought together collections of striking, fascinating and sometimes mysterious scientific objects. Among the most active of such collectors was Francis Gires who, after displaying his collection first in the Musee de Perigord in 1997 and subsequently elsewhere in France, presented it to the Musee Bernard d'Agesci, Niort, in 2000 the same year in which his friend and fellow collector, Ruedi Bebie, donated his collection. Shortly afterwards, in the years 2003-4, in collaborartion with the then curator of the Niort museum, Christian Gendron, Gires created an Association de Saufgarde des Instruments scientifiques et technique de l'Enseignement (ASEISTE).