Models in motion: engineering models as objects of communication in the industrial city, from the workshop to the museum

This thesis examines engineering models of power-producing technologies held and displayed by the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, part of the Science Museum Group, along with a comparative chapter on models at the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution. The models discussed range in date of creation from 1825 to 1981, and were made and adapted for a wide variety of educational and communication purposes. In each case, this thesis will draw on the concepts of object biography and object itinerary to trace the lives of the models from creation to their current place in the museum, examining how different custodians have viewed and treated each model, and how the materiality of each model has in turn influenced these interactions. In many cases, these interactions have involved the alteration, renovation, or total reconstruction of a model, sometimes altering the function and potential future uses of the model, and removing physical evidence of past events in the model's history. In two cases, reconstruction or renovation has arguably turned what were non-model objects into models.
This thesis will also explore the lives of models within museums, how these museums and their predecessor institutions have made and altered models, and the choices museums make when exhibiting models in past, present, and future displays. This will include a discussion of the running of working machinery by museums, looking at why museums choose to run machinery and which ethical issues this can raise, and how these questions pertain to models specifically. In this context, the thesis will explore the tension between fidelity to a model's form and fidelity to its purpose, and how the running of working machinery both threatens physical evidence of a model's history and allows it to remain faithful to its original purpose as an object of communication. This project was designed to run in tandem with the redevelopment of the Power Hall at the Science and Industry Museum, and the final chapter will look at how models will feature in this redevelopment, as well as exploring the future of models in museums more broadly.