London - Museum of Science & Industry

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electronics, navigation, optics, acoustics, meteorology, geology, telegraphy, radio, television, astronomy, shipbuilding, aeronautics, industrial processes, etc.). Thus the section on gas illustrates the history of gas manufacture and distribution from the earliest days to the modern drilling platforms; the aeronautics gallery contains models and actual aircraft of different generations as well as hot-air balloons and other notable flying machines. There is a special children's gallery (Launch Pad), where children may carry out scientific experiments. The Sainsbury Gallery, contains the exhibition "Food for thought" on nutrition and food processing technology. A new gallery, Science in the 18th century, opened in 1993; it displays scientific apparatus once belonging to King George III. Of the museum's endless range of exhibits only a few can be selected to indicate the scope and interest of the collection:

Galileo's telescopes; a microscope dated 1675; astronomical instruments; historic machines; Boulton and Watt's steam engine (1788); the oldest locomotive in the world ("Puffing Billy" 1813); the first mechanical loom; the oldest tin can (1823); historic laboratories and workshops; Graham Bell's first telephone; a telegraph (1845); one of the first short-wave transmitters; a typewriter (1875) with the original keyboard arrangement still in use today; Murdock's first gas-works; historic medical instruments; the original X-ray machines; chemical models including Watson and Crick's model of DNA; bicycles and aircraft; Otto Lilienthal's first glider; the Apollo 10 space capsule; a full- size replica of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander; Soviet spacecraft and a Ford Edsel (1958) among the collection of vintage cars. The Science Museum is also famed for its library (480,000 volumes).