Word: schechner
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Harvard’s presentation was the brainchild of Sara J. Schechner ’79, Wheatland Curator of Harvard’s Collection of Scientific Instruments. Schechner, who has been studying Harvard’s early work in the sciences since her undergraduate years, said she went back into the archives this year to learn more about Winthrop and his transit observations, and came up with the idea of using his original apparatus to view the phenomenon in our own time...
After the Boston Globe featured a story on Winthrop and Harvard’s commemorations of his observations as the lead story in its science section last week, Sky and Telescope magazine and amateur telescope makers in Boston contacted Schechner to be part of the event...
...Suddenly I was looking at a very big event,” Schechner said. She said that she spent a lot of energy on logistics, including arranging to open the Greenhouse Cafe early, recruiting volunteers to help and obtaining radios for communication...
Among the instruments that Schechner shows off is a giant wheel suspended by a pair of girders, once used to create static electricity. Alone, this device might not offer much light-hearted entertainment, but it was connected by wire to a model schoolhouse that could be packed with gun powder and detonated. Schechner says this strange apparatus was likely used in 18th-century classrooms to rouse sleepy students drifting off in the back of the class...
Upon being pressed for illustrations of hysterical science, Schechner explains that such a query is a bit misplaced. It is, in fact, the lecture demonstration department across the hall that is responsible for the sign, she believes...