This thematic itinerary enables you to read about the evolution of scientific instrumentation, also focusing on the changes in the size of different equipment. Innovation in the production of equipment used for research has enabled new applications, with a dual purpose: on one hand, to provide users with the possibility to perform accurate measurements, on the other to obtain increasingly detailed and structured information.
Therefore this itinerary can be interpreted in two directions: FROM THE WARDROBE TO THE BOX
e FROM THE BOX TO THE WARDROBE
, with increasing capacity of complex investigations with an opportunity to follow the development of different tools. It is also possible to gain an overview of the
TECHNICAL-SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE OF ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES
starting with the objects selected for the proposal of itineraries in this section and which belong to
NETWORK MUSEUMS
containing collections, which constitute a rich scientific and technological heritage.
From the Renaissance and during the entire 19th century, no important changes occurred in terms of the size of scientific instruments, which often depended on aesthetics, exhibition purposes or simply appeal.
It wasn't until the Enlightenment that size came to be determined by scientific requirement. Space was conditioned by the technical components of instruments. Veritable "wardrobes" were used to store large instrument components.
The 20th century was characterised by important changes: the revolution of transistors followed by integrated circuits, computers and robots determined a series of transformations which led to miniaturised electronics from the 50s and a considerable reduction in the size of scientific instruments, culminating in portability.
The advantages of innovation were evident: their non-destructiveness and non-invasiveness; moreover, smaller sized instruments enable the use of ultramicro samples (mass < mg). Above all they enabled in situ measurements, thus avoiding the transfer of samples, sometimes of considerable bulk, and the risk that they may be altered, thus nullifying the effects of previous operations and investments.
On the other hand, the new sizes and shapes hampered the direct understanding of the functioning of instruments, which became a sort of black box. This has had evident repercussions on teaching, and above all on the correlation between the user and the instrument, which has been entirely transformed.
However, over the last few years there has also been a shift in the opposite direction. Profound technological evolution has paved the way for new possibilities in the field of research and the use of scientific instruments. For this reason, in some cases there has been an inversion of size trends of such instruments, with boxes gradually becoming as big as wardrobes.
In analysing a few sample instruments used in three fields of chemical analysis (optics, electrochemistry and three phase separation) it is possible to retrace and graphically represent the evolution of scientific instruments in relation to their average size, from "wardrobe to box". In the field of optics in particular, we went from the spectrophotometer to the portable photometer; in the field of electrochemistry, from the table potentiometer to its portable version; lastly, in the field of three phase separation, the itinerary leads us from the earliest gaseous chromatographs up to today's portable HPLC chromatographs.
There is a demand for more and more defined and multi structural analyses and results, leading to an inversion of this tendency, resulting in the production of devices capable of responding to latest requirements, characterised by a return from "the box to the wardrobe". Examples can be found in the evolution of instruments such as those used in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), the quantometer, up to the latest analytical robots such as those used in three-dimensional CAT scans in medicine.
