26 ms·

The Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris is a trove of cunning inventions

102 points by vo2maxer 7y ago

thomas 7y ago
Have been multiple times. It’s a treasure.
- pollinia 7y ago
  > Have been multiple times. It’s a treasure.
chris_st 7y ago
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/permanent-exhibits/ https://www.mercermuseum.org/exhibits/mercer-museum-exhibits...
- OmarShehata 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
zeotroph 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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/
gomox 7y ago
Big fan of the place, especially fond of a very nice programmable (perforated cards) loom and a big Foucault pendulum.
- wpietri 7y ago
  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
twic 7y ago
"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.
- twic 7y ago
  Anyway, the museum is dope. They've got looms, tools, scientific instruments, old computers, a rocket engine, Foucault's pendulum, vignettes of dams, Lavoisier's laboratory, all sorts really. Appropriately enough, it's halfway between Du Pain et des Idées and the Experimental Cocktail Club, both of which are also worth a visit.
- tgflynn 7y ago
  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.
  - twic 7y ago
    I wasn't surprised to find looms. My point is that the descriptions on the exhibits were confusing, because at first I interpreted them as saying "steam-powered crafts were first invented in Lyon in 1782" or whatever.
    - tgflynn 7y ago
      Ah, I see.
  - myself248 7y ago
    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!
wpietri 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
- bambax 7y ago
  The Science Museum in London tries very hard to explain that the Brits invented everything ;-)
jgrahamc 7y ago
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).
The_mboga_real 7y ago
This museum 0-3 Dropped passports
dddw 7y ago
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 7y ago
  We change such titles so people don't have to comment here about how annoying they are.
  - dddw 7y ago
    I really appreciate that!
simonw 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
jerome-jh 7y ago
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.
mojuba 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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
tnolet 7y ago
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.

102 points by vo2maxer 7y ago

thomas 7y ago

Have been multiple times. It’s a treasure.

pollinia 7y ago
> Have been multiple times. It’s a treasure.

chris_st 7y ago

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/permanent-exhibits/ https://www.mercermuseum.org/exhibits/mercer-museum-exhibits...

OmarShehata 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.

zeotroph 7y ago

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 7y ago
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/

gomox 7y ago

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

wpietri 7y ago
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

twic 7y ago

"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.

twic 7y ago
Anyway, the museum is dope. They've got looms, tools, scientific instruments, old computers, a rocket engine, Foucault's pendulum, vignettes of dams, Lavoisier's laboratory, all sorts really. Appropriately enough, it's halfway between Du Pain et des Idées and the Experimental Cocktail Club, both of which are also worth a visit.
tgflynn 7y ago
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.
- twic 7y ago
  I wasn't surprised to find looms. My point is that the descriptions on the exhibits were confusing, because at first I interpreted them as saying "steam-powered crafts were first invented in Lyon in 1782" or whatever.
  - tgflynn 7y ago
    Ah, I see.
- myself248 7y ago
  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!

wpietri 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.
bambax 7y ago
The Science Museum in London tries very hard to explain that the Brits invented everything ;-)

jgrahamc 7y ago

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).

The_mboga_real 7y ago

This museum 0-3 Dropped passports

dddw 7y ago

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 7y ago
We change such titles so people don't have to comment here about how annoying they are.
- dddw 7y ago
  I really appreciate that!

simonw 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

jerome-jh 7y ago

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.

mojuba 7y ago

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 7y ago
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

tnolet 7y ago

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.