I recently attended a guided group tour at the Norsk Teknisk Museum and was given an insight of the history of Norwegian science and technology.
The tour began with a well-organized and detailed exhibit featuring the life work of Kristian Birkeland, a Norwegian scientist who was the first to accurately explain the Aurora Borealis, making him such an important figure in Norwegian history that he is featured on the 200 Norwegian Krone note.
His terrella, Birkeland’s invention to artificially recreate the Northern Lights with electricity, is on display at the museum. It consists of a magnetized orb over which Birkeland sent cathode waves. These waves produced a glow around the poles of the terrella, simulating the Northern Lights. According to the tour guide, Birkeland’s only inaccuracy was that he believed that the color of the lights was produced by atmospheric gases lit afire by solar rays, which were then attracted to the magnetic poles of the Earth. Birkeland’s research was conducted in the early 1900s, several decades before scientists began to research and understand particle physics, so he could not correctly explain the Northern Lights on the atomic level. To learn more about the Northern Lights, we have a complementary article up on the science behind the aurora borealis.
This section of the tour was especially interesting to me because it has always been a goal of mine to see the Northern Lights. The idea that they can be simulated on a much smaller scale is astounding, and being able to see the machine that accomplished this is worth a trip to the museum in itself alone. Of course, the machine is not running; our tour guide informed the group that the machine took an incredible amount of energy to run and was quite dangerous when in use.
The tour continued with an exhibition of a perfectly preserved workshop from the Industrial Revolution Era. Every detail, down to the small, rusty washers and cans of grease, are exactly as they were when the workshop was still in use. The detailed transposition of this workplace from its original site to its current location in the museum is certainly impressive and gives an authentic observation into the Industrial Revolution, but the disorganized clutter of a greasy workshop is a niche exhibition that I assume would only appeal to a few visitors.
Next the tour guide gave information about the many aircrafts housed on the museum’s top floor. One commercial airplane still has cigarettes in the ashtrays from its last passengers. There are also the original baskets from the hot air balloons that made an accidental journey by storm from Paris to Norway during the Siege of Paris in the 1870s, carrying post and carrier pigeons as a solution to the communication blockade.
The museum also has a section on the history of medicine in Norway. One highlight is the perfectly preserved female mummy who died during the Oslo cholera outbreak of the 1850s. The woman was buried in clay, which, combined with the cholera’s draining effect on the bodily fluids, naturally mummified the body. This kind of preservation was more interesting to me than the workshop because it was uncommon and rare; you might come across many workshops (albeit not perfectly preserved from the Industrial Revolution), but it is unusual to find a naturally mummified body anywhere, especially in Norway.
In addition to the informational displays, the museum also contains interactive exhibits that are especially fun for children. Young visitors can learn about energy conservation, music production, and much more. On my visit, many of these exhibits were out of order, perhaps signifying a lack of upkeep at the museum. The activities that were working, however, were quite entertaining even for adults. One included using an air blower to direct a beach ball through a hoop in the air, and another allowed visitors to speak to each other via concave walls on opposite ends of the room.
As a university student, I would not say that this museum is the most exciting thing to do in Oslo; I think it is more suited for families with young children, or for individuals who have a particular interest in the history of Norwegian science and technology. It does, however, have a commendable range of subjects and comprehensive information on each, and the guided tour was indispensable for the extra knowledge and insight you get.
The museum can be reached by taking tram 11 or 12 or bus 54 to Kjelsås. It is opened Tuesday-Friday 9am-4pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am-6pm. Prices are 90 NOK for adults, 50 NOK for children, students, and seniors, and 220 NOK for families. The museum has information in English as well as Norwegian, so it is not a problem if you do not speak Norwegian. More information can be found at their website, www.tekniskmuseum.no.
(This article was original published by The Moose, an online magazine for which I am an editor. The article can be found here: http://themoose.no/2013/12/03/a-review-of-the-norsk-teknisk-museum/)
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