Gouyon, J-B;
(2014)
Making science at home: visual displays of space science and nuclear physics at the Science Museum and on television in postwar Britain.
History and Technology
, 30
(1-2)
37 - 60.
10.1080/07341512.2014.902233.
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Abstract
The public presentation of science and technology in postwar Britain remains a field open to exploration. Current scholarship on the topic is growing but still tends to concentrate on the written word, thus making theorizing, at this stage, difficult. This paper is an attempt to expand the literature through two case studies that compare and synthesize displays of scientific and technological knowledge in two visual media, the Science Museum and television, in the 1950s and 1960s. The topics of these case studies are space exploration and nuclear energy. The thesis this paper explores is that both media fleshed out strategies of displays based on the use of categories from everyday life. As a result, outcomes of large-scale public scientific and technological undertakings were interwoven within audiences’ daily life experiences, thus appearing ordinary rather than extraordinary. This use of symbols and values drawn from private life worked to alleviate fears of risk associated with these new fields of technological exploration and at the same time give them widespread currency in the public sphere.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Making science at home: visual displays of space science and nuclear physics at the Science Museum and on television in postwar Britain |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/07341512.2014.902233 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2014.902233 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Please check the License conditions for the work which you wish to reuse. Full and appropriate attribution must be given. This permission does not cover any third party copyrighted material which may appear in the work requested. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1443161 |
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