Items

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  Pocket Compass Sundial, Spanish

  As with all pocket sundials, this instrument is made for travel. It carries a compass needle so that it can be aligned north-south, and its outer casing is engraved with the latitudes of many major European cities so that its shadow-casting gnomon can be adjusted as its owner moves. The predominance of Iberian cities in the latitudes list, and the presence of Antwerp as one of the four cardinal cities of Europe, suggests that it is Spanish-made and pre-dates the protestant reformation of Antwerp in the late 1560s. A second set of evidence points to the instrument’s global travels. The underside of the dial’s case has been heavily modified by a second artisan sometime after its original manufacture. A second set of city latitudes has been added, in a less assured hand. Remarkably, all of these cities are in the ‘New World’, and include both major Caribbean, Central, and South American cities (Havana; Mexico City; Lima; Quito), as well as many smaller and more obscure cities from across the north and west of the continent. Research links many of these cities to Spanish mining concerns; and so the dial appears to have been modified for use by a Spanish conquistador. Because this second latitude list cannot be matched to any known atlases or geographical texts in Spain, it is plausible that these modifications were made by an artisan working in Central or South America.
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  Ami Stone Tool Collections

  Henri-Marc Ami made his career at the Canada geological survey, where he became convinced that all humans descended from Neanderthals. In the 1930s he created the Canadian School of Prehistoric Archeology in France and started collecting literally tons of prehistoric stone tools, notably at Combe-Capelle, at a time where no law limited the exportation of prehistoric artifacts. Ami's goal was to create collections for most Canadian university to train future archeologists. The collection speaks to the ethical issues that follow the belief in a shared human history when it comes to the collection and circulation of artifacts, notably with respect to the role it gives to Indigenous populations in human evolution and the role museums play today in the preservation of these collections that were acquired “far away from home”. Some of the tools are marked with labels indicating where they were collected. They are stored in a box along with a letter that indicates how the collection arrived at King’s College from the National Museum, after Ami's death.
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  Watanabe "Type No. 21" Side View Arthroscope

  The arthroscope is a surgical instrument that permits the optical inspection of the knee. It was first developed in Japan in the 1950s by a group led by Dr. Masaki Watanabe at Tokyo Teishin Hospital, an institution dedicated to the care of Japanese postal workers and their relatives. It has been suggested that the diagnosis and treatment of knee arthritis received particular attention in Japan due to the cultural importance of the seiza kneeling posture. This particular instrument was among the first practical arthroscopes in commercial production. During its rapid adoption over the 1960s and 1970s, the arthroscope evolved from a diagnostic instrument into the central component of an increasingly effective system for keyhole surgery that drastically improved outcomes and decrease healing time for knee joint surgery. Japan in this period was known for the quality of its optical equipment, especially cameras. This instrument can be fitted to a 1/2 frame 35mm Olympus Pen film Camera. An Atlas of Arthroscopy, first published by Watanabe and collaborators in 1959, helped to spread the technique through excellent colour photos taken using the device. However, Watanabe’s contribution was initially underplayed by the international orthopedic community. Robert W. Jackson, who interned with Dr. Watanabe in Japan in 1964–65, is often credited as having introduced the instrument into the orthopaedic practice, in part through trials done at Toronto General Hospital in 1966. This artifact is one of several from his collection. As the popularity of arthroscopy grew, various international manufactures of surgical instruments, especially those already manufacturing endoscopes, took over the market. The manufacture of precision optical instruments for surgery is now largely based in Germany.
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  Numeral Frame

  This well-used abacus comes from Mexico. It is not known who made it or when, although it is tentatively dated to around 1900. The abacus, as an aid to doing arithmetic, has a long history that can be linked to Roman times. China, Japan, Korea, and Russia have distinctive forms of the instrument. A French mathematician and soldier learned about it in Russia during imprisonment at the time of the Napoleonic wars and brought one back to France for teaching purposes. From there it spread to England and then the United States, where it came to be widely used in teaching at newly established public or common schools. As this example attests, the device also spread to Mexico. Abacuses made for doing commercial arithmetic, such as were common in Asia and Russia, tended to have uniform beads shaped for easy manipulation. Columns might be split, with one or two beads representing the digit 5 and the remaining the digit 1. When the abacus was adopted as a teaching device for young children, the beads became larger and were often colored.