Musée des Arts et Métiers

Edit to this post: I failed to post my Dad's main comment (which I forgot to add and was pointed out to me at dinner tonight)... 'if you are interesting in steampunk, this musuem is your idea of heaven'. And if you don't know what steampunk is, I highly encourage you to look it up. It's an amazing concept.

This morning I went to the Musée des Arts et Métiers with my Dad. I wasn’t that interested in going, but it nearby where we are staying so I decided to tag along. ‘Science and inventions’ I thought ‘I’m sure there’s something to entertain me’.

This museum is a gem, I’m so happy I went.

It’s a much more manageable size and a lot less crowded then the other museums I have been visiting in Paris. The premises have had some kind of arts institution in it since 1789, comprising of a large building with a church in the middle of it. The church area is breathtaking...

Early planes and automobiles on ramparts that you can walk up and view the pieces from all angles. The other side of the church is Foucault’s pendulum, built in 1851 to prove that the earth rotated. I believe what I saw was a copy, because in 2010 the cable holding the original pendulum snapped causing damage to it and the marble floor below...

The other exhibition areas are just as spectacular, comprising of inventions from many different eras used for a specific purpose- for example construction, scientific instruments, etc. This is the communications gallery...

 

There are many highly detailed models of large machines on display as well as originals small enough to fit in a gallery. Of course I went gaga over the looms and knitting machines...

 

 

I also just about fell over when I saw the beautiful hygrometers on display from the late 18^th century (yeah, only other conservators are going to get excited about this particular kind of nerding, but these are so much prettier than a datalogger)...

 

However, my favourite gallery was this room...

 

It is devoted to 18^th and 19^th century automatons, which are pretty toys for the rich that move and play music. The low light levels meant I couldn’t take any photos, unfortunately. However, I found this link showing one of the pieces in the museum’s collection...

http://museumviews.com/2012/11/extravagant-inventions-the-met/

Objects like this are very difficult to display- in order to fully appreciate them a visitor needs to see them function. However, having an old and delicate piece of machinery being constantly played is a terrible idea for its preservation- it will wear out in a short period of time. Musée des Arts et Métiers have found the right balance. Many of the automatons have buttons that the visitor can press to hear the music the object plays. Two of the pieces are displayed so a video appear superimposed over the piece to show how it worked and hear the music it played. One of those was a mechanical bird cage automaton, which was lovely.

I would highly encourage anyone who likes going to museums to visit Musée des Arts et Métiers when they are in Paris. You can comfortably go through it in a few hours and is diverse enough anyone will find something that appeals to your particular brand of inner nerd.