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Cambridge IAG – Horace Darwin’s Toyshop
11 March@19:30-20:30
Cambridge Instruments: Horace Darwin’s Toyshop a History and Legacy
Cambridge Industrial Archaeology Group launches its 2024 season with a talk on one of the major companies in Cambridge during the first half of the 20th century, the Cambridge Instrument Company, the brainchild of Horace Darwin.
Dr Dick Paden will cover the story of the Darwin family and the founding of Cambridge Instruments, charting how the Company evolved over nearly a century from making unique scientific instruments for Cambridge University Laboratories to becoming a world leader in the commercial development of the Stereoscan Scanning Electron Microscope in the 1960s.
Frogs, sound ranging in WW1, magnetic mines, pilot training, power stations, medical instruments and electron microscopes are just some of the topics in this lecture about a world leading instrument- making company now remembered by name only and also the subject of one of the permanent displays at Cambridge Museum of Technology.
Dr Paden was born in 1941 and after attending school in Hull, came up to Cambridge to read the Natural Sciences Tripos at Christ’s College. He later transferred to the Electrical Sciences Tripos when it was first offered in 1962. His PhD focused on the dual electron gun column of the microscope created by Bill Nixon in the Engineering Dept. He went on to forge a career in scanning electron microscopy first at Cambridge Scientific Instruments later moving to EMI Medical, CamScan where he was eventually CEO and Technical Director. Since retiring in 2012 he has been a consultant on SEM work and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Microscopical Society in 2014 for contributions to Scanning Microscopy.
The talk will take place in the Pye Building at Cambridge Museum of Technology. Entrance on the night is via the Museum’s Cheddars Lane gate.
There will be free light refreshments courtesy of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMECHE)
Tickets for the talk are available on the door for £5 a head, £3 for students. Members and Volunteers of Cambridge Museum of Technology can attend for free.
Full details can be found on the Museum (CMT) Website, Events page: https://www.museumoftechnology.com/