The Science Museum Houses

Falling under the auspices of the National Museum of Science and Industry, the Science Museum is located on the Exhibition Road of South Kensington and shares the limelight with its sister institutions the Victoria and Albert Museums in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Encompassing seven floors, the Science Museum invites you on a journey of discovery. Its interactive galleries take you through an exploration of the history of technology, its evolution to the modern-day and the visions of the future of mankind.

The museum was originally conceived as part of the South Kensington Museum in 1857 with items left over from the Great Exhibition that was an epoch-marking event in the Victorian era.

These items included among its ranks some of the early prototype machinery such as the oldest surviving steam train, a functional model of the Babbage Difference Engine, the first-ever jet engine, documents from the early experiments for a typewriter and the prototype of the Clock of Long Now. These later formed the Museum of Patents and were shifted the Science Collections of the South Kensington Museum.

It was in 1909 that the exhibits of the Science Collections became so extensive that it was declared a museum in its own right and appointed its own director. This was to be the first incarnation of the institution that stands today, whose present buildings were opened to the public in the latter days of the 1920s.

Today, the Museum’s collection comprises over 300,000 items, the most renowned of which pertain to medical science and related fields. These are largely concentrated on the fourth floor, which is devoted to reconstructive performances on the history of medical practice, and the fifth floor, which investigates the modus operandi and instruments of ancient doctors from across the world’s cultures. The newly-established wing named in honor of pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome is one of the leading centres of contemporary bio-science in the world