
The Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris is a trove of cunning inventions - vo2maxer
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/best-little-museum-you-never-visited-180956025/
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zeotroph
If you can't visit but are interested in the topic and the beginning of the
industrial revolution in general, the YouTube channel "Machine Thinking" has a
video about this[1][2] and related topics.

E.g. in another video he explains how to get a perfectly plan surface from
scratch: Rubbing two somewhat flat surfaces together until they are smooth
enough does not work, you might end up with a subtly concave/convex
combination. But do that with three surfaces and the result can only be
perfectly flat, though it will take quite some time.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEqmfH7z2Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEqmfH7z2Y)
\- Paris' Temple To Science - Part I

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djB9oK6pkbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djB9oK6pkbA)
\- The 1751 Machine that Made Everything

~~~
contingencies
Nice channel, thanks for sharing. Great presenter, too: _The Fresh Revolution
is a vast and complicated subject, but that 's not going to stop me from
grossly simplifying it._

Our equivalent museum here in Sydney is the Museum of Applied Arts and
Sciences (MAAS) / Powerhouse Museum[0] which is currently in a state of
transition as a political football, unfortunately. Australia seems to have
largely given up on creative industry and industrial education.

I can also recommend [http://507movements.com/](http://507movements.com/)

[0] [https://maas.museum/powerhouse-museum/](https://maas.museum/powerhouse-
museum/)

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chris_st
Fantastic! I'd love to visit.

Similar to that museum (in obscurity and interest, if not in beauty) is the
Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Mercer collected tools & objects
that were hand-made, before the industrial revolution.

It's a huge, poured-concrete (!) building, full of an amazing variety of
objects. Small rooms contain dozens of things such as hand drills, ladies'
hair-combs, etc.

This photo gives something of an idea:
[https://www.mercermuseum.org/exhibits/mercer-museum-
exhibits...](https://www.mercermuseum.org/exhibits/mercer-museum-
exhibits/permanent-exhibits/)

~~~
OmarShehata
I had very mixed feelings visiting the Mercer Museum. It's basically this guy
who was obsessed with castles his whole life and always wanted to live in one,
backpacked around Europe for 8 (!!) years after graduating college, and came
back to use his rich aunt's money to build himself a castle and live in it.

I thought the collection was interesting, but his whole life seemed kind of
one long vacation where he tried to learn a lot of different things and
achieved nothing in particular.

~~~
jacobolus
So what?

Dude was a collector of art and old tools, sold his own art, was the architect
for his own buildings, and wrote several books.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Chapman_Mercer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Chapman_Mercer)

Most people (including most scientists, artists, writers, businesspeople,
etc.) never “achieve something in particular” by this kind of standard.

Certainly plenty of “idle rich” do significantly less socially beneficial work
than Mercer. If you start looking around at the rich more generally (e.g.
people whose names are on university buildings) a substantial proportion were
crooks of one type or another.

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twic
"Craft" here translates the French word "métier", which means something like
craft but also something like profession or vocation.

There's a gallery of looms, which is immensely confusing until you realise
that "métier" is also the word for loom.

~~~
tgflynn
Yes, I don't think they should have attempted a literal translation and
instead described it as a museum of science and technology (as they do in the
article).

"Arts and Crafts", at least in modern American English has a very different
meaning, and would make people expect to find the kinds of things that are
sold on Etsy.

EDIT: I'm not sure why you would be surprised to find looms there, even aside
from the double meaning. I believe machinery for the production of textiles
were among the earliest triumphs of the industrial revolution and the Jacquard
loom (invented in France) was the first known programmable machine.

~~~
myself248
I live just a few miles from the Henry Ford Museum, and its outdoor section,
Greenfield Village. It sounds like exactly the same sort of place. As a kid, I
spent a lot of time around the tractors and trains, and the large stationary
steam engines. (There's one fixed in place so you can climb into the cylinder
through the valve opening, if you're so inclined.)

As an adult, I appreciate so much more of the collection, even the furniture
and household appliances that seemed utterly boring to my younger self. They
tell a story of everyday life for the people who used them, and the design and
manufacturing capability of the industry that produced them.

Out in the Village, there's a weaving shop with several treadle-operated
looms, and one spectacular Jacquard-style machine that's so tall part of it is
upstairs. They make new cards for it periodically, and run off 1800s-style
textiles with "Made in 2020" and such woven into them. ;)

I need to get to Paris next!

~~~
specialist
Thanks for sharing. Another museum for my bucket list.

 _"...and the large stationary steam engines."_

The first time I recall seeing an actual functioning steam engine was at last
year's Deming Logging Show. It was an early model of steam donkey.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_donkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_donkey)

[http://demingloggingshow.com](http://demingloggingshow.com)

Like a lot of kids, my son was obsessed with trains, steam shovels, dozers,
etc. There's probably all sorts of reasons to not exhibit actual machinery.
But it'd be cool. Maybe scale models or replicas.

I know that if I could watch a working loom, the docents would have to drag me
out at closing time.

~~~
myself248
Why on earth would you not exhibit actual machinery? It's plenty strong --
just keep it painted and greased so it doesn't rust -- and it's so much
cooler. They rebuild the boilers in the trains every few years, using period
tools and techniques so the "new" one is just like the old.

When they run the engines inside the museum, it's on compressed air rather
than actual steam, for indoor humidity reasons. But outdoors, if it's running,
it's because there's coal burning and water boiling not far away.

Everything in the Henry Ford is real, except the Wright Flyer replica and I
think they've replaced a few floorboards in some of the buildings. But
otherwise, you're walking on the same floors that Edison and Steinmetz walked
on, while the generators they built spin at the other side of the room and
light the bulbs overhead. The food in the café is from period recipes, and you
can ride around the grounds in a Model T if you want to pay a little extra.

> the docents would have to drag me out

That's more-or-less what happened with me; they shut down the weaving shop an
hour before the grounds close, and I easily had enough questions for three or
four hours more. That's okay, I'll go back in spring!

You can spend at least a whole day in the museum and another in the village,
so plan accordingly. Get here.

------
wpietri
Ah, I loved visiting here. Strongly recommended for people who appreciate the
history of technology.

My one surprise was that it turned out the French apparently invented
everything. There was even an iPod display that managed to credit the French.

~~~
bsaul
it's something you can find on wikipedia as well. Every local wikipedia
attributes the original inventor of big things ( planes, cinema ,
internet...and even general relativity ( see poincarré)) to someone of its own
nationality.

it's probably going to keep happening since R&D is nowadays pretty much always
the work of international teams.

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simonw
Visited this a few months ago - it's an absolute gem.

I love automata - mechanical sculptures that animate in some way - and it has
a whole gallery of them, including a doll that can play the harpsichord that
was once owned by Marie Antoinette.

I listed it on my niche museums website here: [https://www.niche-
museums.com/browse/museums/30](https://www.niche-
museums.com/browse/museums/30)

~~~
nicolas314
They even have a decimal clock dated from the French revolution: 10 hours per
day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute. Total of 100k seconds/day,
making seconds a bit shorter. Was largely ignored, only lasted a few years.
The computer section has a ZX81, a ZX Spectrum, an Oric Atmos, and a Commodore
64 on display if memory serves me right. All my childhood computers, feels
weird seeing them in a museum. My kids were amazed by the first calculators
made of paper and cardboard.

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mojuba
Interesting, will definitely visit, however:

Here is a challenge for you: try to find the location of the museum on their
web site [1].

This is so, so common to museum/venue/restaurant web sites. Most of the time
it takes you multiple clicks and a lot of scanning to find one piece of
information that should be literally on top of every page: the _location_ of
the thing the web site is built for.

I think the problem comes from CMS or web site builder templates for
businesses. This should definitely be revisited. A web site of something
"visitable" in the real world should be centered around the physical location,
and then the rest, not the other way around.

(P.S. if you have just guessed that the museum should be somewhere in the Arts
et Métiers area of Paris, you are right)

[1] [https://www.arts-et-metiers.net](https://www.arts-et-metiers.net)

~~~
hadrien01
From what I can see there's only one page in English on the website[1] and it
contains the address.

[1] [https://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee/visitor-
information](https://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee/visitor-information)

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gomox
Big fan of the place, especially fond of a very nice programmable (perforated
cards) loom and a big Foucault pendulum.

~~~
wpietri
And not just a Foucault pendulum, but _the_ Foucault's pendulum, the one that
features prominently in Umberto Eco's novel:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_Pendulum)

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jerome-jh
It is not that I am so old, but I was there with my kid some time ago (FYI it
is free the 1st sunday of every month :). Kid asks: "Daddy what is it?". Me:
"Ahem kid, this is a telephone". Basically the POTS phone we had at home as I
was myself a kid. Now it is in a museum.

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tnolet
The old huge IBM stuff they have is fascinating but I really was amazed by the
Cray. What a cool weird design piece. They totally had some Bauhaus type
designer work on the housing.

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thomas
Have been multiple times. It’s a treasure.

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dddw
I really hate such titles "The Best insert (subject) You Never (verb) in
(location)". especially since it's a blanket statement, which (a) shames
people who haven't done it, and (b) makes people who did do it feel ignored.
Common, you write for a living? don't use such tropes then.

yes I already visited the museum, it's nice, first car, first camera, lot's of
cool stuff. Most displays are in French though, it could do with a little
upgrade in how the collection is presented.

~~~
dang
We change such titles so people don't have to comment here about how annoying
they are.

~~~
dddw
I really appreciate that!

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jgrahamc
Shameless plug but this is one of the places in my book: The Geek Atlas
([http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do)).

