Science Museum of Virginia
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The Science Museum of Virginia is a
science museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in mu ...
located in
Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...
. Established in 1970, it is an agency of the
Commonwealth of Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States, Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United Stat ...
. It is housed in the former Broad Street Station, built in 1917.


History


Early proposals

In 1906, the
Virginia General Assembly The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World, and was established on July 30, 161 ...
approved funds for the construction of a simple "exhibits center" to display mineral and timber exhibits being assembled for the
Jamestown Exposition The Jamestown Exposition was one of the many world's fairs and expositions that were popular in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, it w ...
of 1907. After the exposition ended, many of the items were moved to Richmond's
Capitol Square Capitol Square is a public square in Downtown Columbus, Ohio. The square includes the Ohio Statehouse, its Capitol Grounds, as well as the buildings and features surrounding the square. The Capitol Grounds are surrounded on the north and west ...
. The "State Museum" as it came to be known opened in 1910, adding displays of natural historical specimens from a variety of state agencies to its collection over the years. In 1942, the General Assembly created a study commission to consider establishing an official State science museum. That commission succeeded in endorsing the creation of a "Virginia Museum of Science" in 1943. The fiscal restraints and pressing concerns of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
– and the recession which followed it – prevented the General Assembly from taking further action. In 1946, the General Assembly suspended work on a State science museum awaiting appropriate space and funds. By 1964, the General Assembly resumed the project of a "State Museum". A new study was commissioned, and once again, the establishment of a "museum of science, archaeology, and natural history" was proposed, but this measure died in the committee. Shortly thereafter, the museum's displays and collections in the basement of the state's Financial Building were gradually disassembled and their collections were dispersed to various State universities. However, the closing of the "State Museum" galvanized the state's scientific community, and between 1965 and 1967, the Virginia Academy of Sciences, led by Dr. Roscoe D. Hughes, vigorously lobbied Virginia's Governor Mills E. Godwin, to sponsor legislation in the General Assembly to finally establish the State Science Museum.


Creation

Enabling legislation was drafted and approved by the General Assembly, and on July 1, 1970, the Science Museum of Virginia was established. Over the next several years, the Museum attempted to find an empty storefront, warehouse, or other space which could be used as a temporary home. Friends of the Museum pressed the State to allow it to move into part of the old Broad Street Station, which had recently been purchased from the railroad company by the State and was destined for the wrecking ball. Broad Street Station was built by the
Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad was a railroad connecting Richmond, Virginia, to Washington, D.C. The track is now the RF&P Subdivision of the CSX Transportation system; the original corporation is no longer a railroad comp ...
(RF&P) in 1917 in the neoclassical style by the architect
John Russell Pope John Russell Pope (April 24, 1874 – August 27, 1937) was an American architect whose firm is widely known for designing major public buildings, including the National Archives and Records Administration building (completed in 1935), the Jeffe ...
. Although the station also served the trains of the
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad was a United States Class I railroad formed in 1900, though predecessor railroads had used the ACL brand since 1871. In 1967 it merged with long-time rival Seaboard Air Line Railroad to form the Seaboard Coast L ...
(ACL), the
Norfolk and Western Railway The Norfolk and Western Railway , commonly called the N&W, was a US class I railroad, formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It was headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, for most of its existence. Its motto was "Precisio ...
(N&W), and eventually the
Seaboard Air Line Railway The Seaboard Air Line Railroad , which styled itself "The Route of Courteous Service," was an American railroad which existed from April 14, 1900, until July 1, 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, its longtime rival, t ...
(SAL), much of the stock of the RF&P was owned by the State of Virginia's Retirement System, dating to a period before the American Civil War when it was a major investment in Virginia's future. Broad Street Station was abandoned shortly after
Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...
started in Richmond in 1971. The Museum staff occupied Broad Street Station on January 22, 1976. On January 6, 1977, Governor Godwin, in his second term, presided over the dedication of the Science Museum's first exhibit gallery, The Discovery Room. The event celebrated the fifty-eighth anniversary and rebirth of Broad Street Station and the culmination of over seventy years of effort to establish the Science Museum of Virginia.


Exhibit history

A remodeled and greatly expanded
Aquarium An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aq ...
opened in 1981. That same year, the world's largest analemmic
sundial A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a flat ...
, located in the Museum's parking lot, was dedicated. It would later be listed in the ''
Guinness Book of World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
''. In 1982 the Museum introduced Crystal World, the largest and most comprehensive exhibit in the world on the subject of
crystallography Crystallography is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids. Crystallography is a fundamental subject in the fields of materials science and solid-state physics (condensed matter physics). The wor ...
. Also introduced was the
Solar Challenger The Solar Challenger was a solar-powered electric aircraft designed by Paul MacCready's AeroVironment. The aircraft was designed as an improvement on the Gossamer Penguin, which in turn was a solar-powered variant of the human-powered Gossamer ...
, the world's first successful solar airplane, which had just completed a world tour to celebrate its first solar-powered flight from Paris to London. In 1983 the Museum dedicated its new Universe Planetarium & Space Theater, now called The Dome. The Theater's
Evans & Sutherland Evans & Sutherland is a pioneering American computer firm in the computer graphics field. Its current products are used in digital projection environments like planetariums. Its simulation business, which it sold to Rockwell Collins, sold products ...
Digistar Digistar is the first computer graphics-based planetarium projection and content system. It was designed by Evans & Sutherland and released in 1983. The technology originally focused on accurate and high quality display of stars, including for the ...
planetarium projector was the world's first computer/video planetarium projection system and the first that could take visitors on simulated trips through both time and space. Its film projection system was only one of a handful around the world capable of showing 70 mm
OMNIMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (approximately either 1.43:1 or 1.90:1) and steep stadium seating. Graeme F ...
films. The theaters' sound system featured over one hundred individual speakers and generated enough power to simulate earthquakes and rocket lift-offs. The seventy-six-foot domed screen of the theater itself was then the world's largest. It is still the largest screen in Virginia to this day. In 2003 the Museum unveiled the Grand Kugel, the world's largest
kugel ball A kugel fountain (also called a "floating" sphere fountain or by the pleonasmic name kugel ball) is a water feature or sculpture where a sphere sits in a fitted hollow in a pedestal, and is supported by aquaplaning on a thin film of water. Pres ...
at a cost of $1.5 million. The Grand Kugel was originally carved from an 86-ton block of
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
n black granite. It was 8 feet, 8.7 inches in diameter, and it floated on a base of
granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...
. Shortly after installation, the Grand Kugel began to crack. The crack eventually spread through the sphere, rendering it unfloatable. A replacement kugel ball was installed in October 2005. The original kugel is still on display behind the museum. In the former train loading area which has been redeveloped, large static displays now include: *
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond t ...
(C&O)
steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...
and tender, Kanawha class # 2732 *
Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad was a railroad connecting Richmond, Virginia, to Washington, D.C. The track is now the RF&P Subdivision of the CSX Transportation system; the original corporation is no longer a railroad comp ...
(RF&P) "Car One" business car *''
Aluminaut ''Aluminaut'' (built in 1964) was the world's first aluminum submarine. An experimental vessel, the 80-ton, crewed deep-ocean research submersible was built by Reynolds Metals Company, which was seeking to promote the utility of aluminum. ''A ...
'', the world's first
aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...
submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
, designed by and built for Richmond-based
Reynolds Metals Company Reynolds Group Holdings is a New Zealand based packaging company with roots in the former Reynolds Metals Company, which was the second-largest aluminum company in the United States, and the third-largest in the world. Reynolds Metals was acquire ...
in the 1960s, also notable for helping recover a "lost" U.S. atomic bomb in 1966. In 2014 the Museum upgraded its five-story theater, The Dome, with a new digital projection system. In 2016 the Museum opened a new permanent exhibition, Speed, with an
SR-71 Blackbird The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" is a long-range, high-altitude, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed and manufactured by the American aerospace company Lockheed Corporation. It was operated by the United States Air Force ...
suspended from the ceiling. The Blackbird was relocated from the
Virginia Aviation Museum The Virginia Aviation Museum was an aviation museum in unincorporated Henrico County, Virginia, adjacent to Richmond International Airport (formerly "Richard Evelyn Byrd Flying Field"). Erected in 1986, the museum housed a collection of some thi ...
near the
Richmond International Airport Richmond International Airport is a joint civil-military airport in Sandston, Virginia, United States, an unincorporated community (in Henrico County). The airport is about 7 miles (11 km) southeast of downtown Richmond, the capital of ...
. In 2017 the ambitious exhibition ''Da Vinci—Alive the Experience'' opened to the public. This travelling exhibition of the art and science of
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...
was developed by Grande Exhibitions in Australia, under the auspices of the Commune di Roma, Commune di Firenze and Citta di Venezia, with the assistance of Pascal Cotte of Lumiere Technology, France.


Affiliated museums

In addition to the Broad Street location, the
Danville Science Center Danville Science Center is a science museum affiliated with the Science Museum of Virginia located in the tobacco warehouse district of Danville, Virginia. The museum features rotating exhibits on the lower level and permanent exhibits on the uppe ...
in Danville, Virginia is affiliated with the Science Museum of Virginia.


References


External links


Science Museum of Virginia
{{authority control Science museums in Virginia Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Planetaria in the United States Museums in Richmond, Virginia John Russell Pope buildings Museums established in 1970 1970 establishments in Virginia